Sins Of Our Fathers
by theeventualwinner
Summary: Celebrimbor chooses a slippery path when Annatar first announces himself in the realm of Eregion, and it is a path that the Maia does all that he can to grease to its inevitably sticky end. A series tracing the seduction, corruption and fall of an elf lord and his people, and the grim triumph of one smug little Maia. NSFW.
1. Superbia

Superbia

The High Council of Ost-in-Edhil, the great fortress city of the Noldor perched amid the high fells of Eregion, sat arrayed in their stately finery, and seven pairs of curious eyes stared as one at the stranger come before them. From a wide, crescent-shaped table set upon a low dais they commanded the room, their lord seated firmly in the centre with his council members arcing outwards from him. Great ribbons of tinted light streamed across the hall's expanse from the stained-glass windows studded into its vaulted walls, and they tinged the creamy marble underfoot in wondrous hues of alchemical turquoise, viridian, indigo and ruby. At the very base of the dais a wide metal-wrought circle was inlaid amid the stone, and within it a star spun of delicate veins of _mithril_ gleamed, its eight pointed rays seeming to run with liquid flames as the gentle afternoon light lapped across it.

Framed in the very epicentre of this star the stranger was poised, gazing with mild intrigue at the grandeur of the Noldorin hall about him. As he awaited the council's commencement he stood neutrally, the oilskin hood of his dusty travelling cloak drawn back respectfully, yet guided by motives far more obscure than respect he subtly shifted his gaze to the table before him. Along its arms some council members squinted back at him, some fiddled with goblets or papers set before them, one looked abjectly bored, and the stranger's eyes skated coolly over their ranks.

To his extreme right a bulky, belligerent-looking _ner_ sat, his eyes simmering like cauldrons of blackest pitch as he glowered down at the stranger. A challenge then, the stranger thought wryly, though one of little consequence: all bluster and little bite he had often found men of such demeanour. It took all of his willpower to refrain from arching a self-satisfied eyebrow as the _ner's_ frown turned into an outright scowl as the _nis_ seated next to him nudged him with her elbow, and to the _nis_ then the stranger looked. An archaic style of robe garbed her, a shimmering cloth of gold she wore fastened at the shoulder with a great brooch of yellow amethysts fashioned into the shape of a sunflower. A pretty trinket, the stranger thought it, and as she shifted in her seat the jewels threw ghostly refractions of light over her neighbours. A charming effect, surely, yet upon the _nis_ seated to her right it illumined nothing but an ancient pain. For beneath that _nis'_ sweep of silver hair a livid burn puckered over her right cheek and neck; the flesh twisted and withered into a gnarled, fibrous mass of pink scar tissue, marring the elf's otherwise smooth features.

A vague sense of discomfort flitted through the stranger then, and quickly he looked away. He was no stranger to scars; indeed they seemed to haunt him, yet for this _nis_ to bear one so heavily, to wear such hurt so openly sent a prickle of unease crawling his spine. He wondered how it had happened. He wondered if he had a hand in its doing. That thought wavered ominously within him for an instant, until with a practised ease he shrugged it aside, and coolly then he flicked his gaze to the opposite side of the table.

Upon its outermost chair a _nis _sat proudly, her gauntleted hands knitted together on the table before her, and evenly she met his glance. A curl of gaiety plucked at his lips, almost shyly he smiled at her, but as the seconds crawled by his friendly venture went unrequited. Truly, the stranger thought, wiping the smile from his face to stand neutrally once more, one might find more merriment in an abattoir. For further inwards along the table's curve two _neri_ looked back at him; a flame-haired elf with grey eyes that unambiguously longed to be elsewhere, and a strange elf with skin the colour of burnished oak. Yet that in itself was not so strange; it was the green-inked tattoo that unfurled over the elf's face, neck, arms and hands left exposed that intrigued the stranger so. Along his skin the tattoo coiled, sprouted, _rooted, _in artistry so lifelike that almost it seemed he was truly wrapped in strands of some trailing clematis or snaking vine. Feathers and bone-trinkets were braided into the elf's swept-back hair, his eyes were the milky rheum of those who had little love of the sun, and the stranger could not help but stare.

Rarely did one see an Avarin come among the people of the Eldar, and to glimpse one come to power among the Noldor was rarer still. Even in all of the stranger's long years he had encountered but a handful of the Moriquendi, and poor stock at that. They did not scream like the others, he recalled, and hard he fought to keep his face impassive as those memories quirked through him. They simply choked out their pain in mute, scratching hisses, and no false promises of freedom could buy their secrets.

Yet smoothly the stranger looked onwards, and his gaze was drawn to the elf who crowned the very centre of the table. For there Celebrimbor, Lord of Eregion, presided, and with him sat the purpose of the stranger's coming here.

Black, unbound hair fell sleekly over the elf lord's broad shoulders, and through the close fit of his dark tunic the stranger could glimpse the curl and set of strong, well-formed muscles. A circlet of interwoven _mithril_ strands inlaid with gossamer threads of diamonds was set upon his brow in antique Noldorin fashion, framing a face both young and prideful, and boldly the elf lord met the stranger's eyes. As one long accustomed to power and command he sat, leaning to his side with his right elbow propped upon the table's edge while held within his hand he examined a slightly crumpled sheaf of parchment.

An intricate emblem of crossed hammers and shivering stars was picked out in crystals upon the curved back of his chair, and the gemstones of their own accord shone a pallid radiance out over their lord as he shifted, as he glanced back down at the letter in his hand. Dimly his eyes skated the words before him, and his brow furrowed as he re-read the strange tidings of his kin.

_Fair he seems,_ the High King Gil-galad had penned, in his own hand no less. Not days before the stranger's sudden arrival this letter had been brought to him, the messenger that bore it only relaying his king's impetus that Celebrimbor give thought to its urgency. _Fair he seems, but his words feel greased upon the tongue. Trust him not. He seems not wholly false, but neither is he true._

Celebrimbor's frown deepened, yet his dark eyes lifted to rest once more upon the stranger standing before him. No overt mark of Valinor the newcomer bore, yet to Celebrimbor's eyes his sanctity could scarcely be refuted. Blond hair fell in mellow, honeyed locks to his waist; his golden eyes glimmered with an inner light beyond the power and ken of the mortal world. A very air of effervescence seemed to shimmer about him, a slight glitter of entrancement limned the stranger in an enticing, alluring glow; promising naught but wealth and luxury and ease. No Maia had Celebrimbor glimpsed before save the accursed Valaraukar and their foul ilk in the turmoil of battle, and yet here in the gentle light of his court surely one of their benevolent brethren stood now, a serene expression poised across handsome face.

In other times they would have openly welcomed him into their city, without question or reservation he would have been revered. Yet the worry of the High King's message clouded Celebrimbor's heart; of late evil things had been stirring in the East, the Hadhodrim of Khazad-dûm grew withdrawn and wary, and vengeful ghosts now stalked the ruins of Belegost and Nogrod in the cold mountains. So the Noldor had shut their gates, the watch upon the hills and the Great Road was doubled, and even towards so fair a stranger come among them now they were mistrustful.

"Tell me, Maia," Celebrimbor said sternly, rousing himself to lean imperiously forwards in his chair. "What is your name?"

Immediately the stranger straightened, proudly he drew himself up, and the hint of a smile curled about his lips. Calmly, respectfully, his gaze swept the expanse of the high table until at last his eyes settled upon Celebrimbor, and in a rich, melodious voice he replied, "Aulendil I am named by those in the Blessed Realm, my exalted lords and ladies."

Celebrimbor's eyebrow arched, more than one of the council members cocked their heads at such an unlikely answer, but they held their silence until at last their lord remarked, "That is a noble heritage that you claim, stranger. You hail from the Lord Aulë's halls, then?"

"I did."

"You _did_?" The scepticism in the burly _ner's_ voice was biting, yet fluidly the stranger turned to meet him.

"It is a matter long past, my lord," he replied diplomatically. "And it is of little concern here. Ere this age was first begun I was tasked by my master with labours that have often drawn me abroad, and it has been long since I have resided in his great halls."

The _ner's_ eyes narrowed suspiciously, menace trembled in the clench of his jaw, yet before he could speak anew the stranger smiled, and beseechingly he spoke. "If it would better please my lords and ladies of the council, you might call me Annatar."

"The Lord of Gifts?" The flame-haired _ner_ snorted in derision, apparently jolted from his erstwhile reveries. "The titles that you claim grow ever more audacious, Maia!"

"Peace, Vëantor," Celebrimbor snapped, and the _ner's_ mouth twisted reluctantly shut as his lord leaned forward, an expression of mild interest caught over his face. "Let him have his say."

"Thank you, my lord," Annatar replied gratefully. Several ornate rings he wore about his fingers, and swiftly now he turned one upon his forefinger, pressing its great diamond hard into the skin of his palm as his fist closed about it. "No titles do I claim save those that carry truth, my lords. I have much that I might bestow upon you."

"Then at last we reach the matter at hand," Celebrimbor said quickly, sensing the rankling mood of his councilmen and resolving to put swift ease to the issue. "Why have you come here, Annatar? For what reason do you present yourself before us?"

The blond cascade of the Maia's hair caught in a stream of clear sunlight as he stepped forward slightly, dappling him in a lulling, ethereal glow. "The ages of Ëa have been long, wearisome and full of bitter toil for those who dwell upon these shores. For years uncounted my master, and those others of his noble brethren, have turned their faces from these realms, believing them scoured of life, or holding those of such ill repute as to be unmemorable in their fathomless thoughts. The hurts of the Noldor's rebellion sting still deep, both flesh and pride were wounded in those sad affairs, and pride is a thing hard lost even for those who are almighty. Yet with the wearing of an age, the Valar have realised their error. Should they only have acted sooner then much might have been preserved that is now lost. Much in this world might have been otherwise.

My master wishes now to make amends for such a slight. The Powers have sent forth emissaries from the Blessed Realm to aid the remnants of the Noldor in the world's perils. Ones such as I, we have been sent to guide those left still adrift, to share the wealth and gifts of Aman long since denied to those they once deemed faithless and accursed.

So my master has decreed my purpose, and upon his errand and with his mighty will I have come unto you, my lords and ladies. I pray only that you might honour me in this, and through me accept the gifts of the Valar sent forth to you now."

A long, contemplative silence rolled through the hall as the council pondered such wondrous words, and patiently Annatar awaited their response.

"You come in the guise of friendship, then?" Celebrimbor at last enquired, squinting down at Annatar as if he half-expected some vile deceit or treachery.

"I do," Annatar replied simply. "Forth from my master's realms I have come freely, and to you now I offer my aid in all that I might."

"And what might you aid in?" The golden-clad _nis_ asked, and keenly she peered down at him.

"In whatsoever my lords and ladies might see fit to ask of me." Annatar did not move, he stood serenely at the centre of the _mithril_-wrought star, yet as he spoke the air of the hall seemed to thicken, a glistening aura coalesced like an intoxicating mist about him. It curled and slid and beckoned with the flow of his voice. "Skills I possess, powers I wield, and they should be the envy of even the most decadent of your dreams. Of many things I have knowledge: of counsels to the great and wise, of secret wisdoms and ways of the earth, of beasts, of incantations, of empires and riches and conquests, and yet…"

The lulling chant of Annatar's voice fell away, and as if abruptly ripped from some pleasant reverie Celebrimbor jerked backwards in his seat. A blurry sensation was left ringing in his ears, the pressure in the room seemed for an instant to buckle and re-align, yet where such things might once have sparked caution in him, he was only filled with an elation, a wonder of all the tantalising things that the Maia had spoken of. Yet looking down now Annatar he seemed almost humble. Vanished was that aura of subtle bewitchment into a mood of almost childlike bashfulness, and a strange, sudden surge of endearment rocked through Celebrimbor's heart.

"I must profess, my lord," the Maia said coyly, "a certain… proclivity, a passion, indeed, for smithying. In jewel-craft and metallurgy I find my delight; the forge is where my heart truly lies, in the crash of anvils and the thrill of metal, for these are as sweet to me as any flowing river or flower budding in the meadow."

Celebrimbor's smile widened, eagerly he shook aside the slight ring that still hovered in his ears, and he leaned forward once more in his chair.

"You are skilful in metallurgy, then?"

"I do not wish to boast, lord. Modest skill I proclaim, and no more."

A dark, throaty laugh burst through the hall then, and frigidly Annatar turned to face the burly _ner_ who rebuked him. "Take care now, my lord," the _ner_ rumbled, "for here is one who speaks guilefully. Pride and false contrition mingle in one tangled passage over this Maia's gilded tongue!"

Resentment flickered in Annatar's eyes, but swiftly he wiped that irk from him even as Celebrimbor rounded upon his errant councilman.

"Patience, Corannon," he said sharply, and the _ner_ looked away, sweeping the dark fall of his hair behind his shoulders as he huffed discontentedly to himself.

"My council," Celebrimbor continued, mastering his brusqueness and proceeding more evenly, "hear me well. If a Maia of Aulë's host offers to us even his modest knowledge then he is not lightly to be turned aside. The wonders that lie beneath that exquisite roof live still in my dreams, fairer than all imagining. If Annatar could teach us but part of that skill, if he could replicate even a fragment of the works that lie within that house then we would be richer for it indeed. Such works we could forge, such things we could make; artifices and jewels that might rival even those of my forebears…"

"Have you knowledge of weapons of war, Annatar?" the gauntleted _nis_ upon his left asked, and eagerly she peered down at him.

"Weapons of war, my lady?" he countered smoothly. "With such devices I have had some… passing experience, yet such crude things have never moved my heart to joy. For it is given to the secret gemstones that lie in caverns yet unexplored, to the silver crowns that might adorn the worthiest of heads."

"Come then, Annatar," Celebrimbor mused, drumming his fingers contemplatively upon the tabletop. "Tell me, could you teach of what you know? This knowledge, is it yours to impart? Could you equal the works of your blessed kindred, or indeed my own?"

"Perhaps, my lord," Annatar said softly, "I might surpass them."

Celebrimbor's eyes grew wide, and a snort of disbelief leapt from Vëantor's throat. "You play a dangerous game, Maia," he sneered, but from the opposite side of the table the golden-clad _nis_ leant forward.

"Hush," she tutted, "you rebuke him too hotly. Temper your mood, and think well. If Annatar is true to his word then we may make this realm a place of wealth at which even the Hadhodrim in their malachite halls would blush and stutter with jealousy."

A murmur ran about the table then, ambitions and doubts warred in many a narrowed eye, and Annatar awaited their resolution. Passively he stood, yet with an ease that bordered dangerously upon insolence he toyed with the rings about his fingers, until at last the burned _nis_ turned to him.

"You speak fairly, Annatar," she whispered, her voice scarce more than a husky susurrus amid the hall's airy pillars, "but for your beauty I sense there is yet guile in you."

"Not so, my lady," he replied, a look of genuine hurt moiling across his face, and plaintively he continued, "I have answered your questions with naught but legitimacy."

"A serpent may seem beautiful, yet such radiant scales mask the poison that festers within it."

"You wound me, my lady. Openly I have come before you, humbly and with promise of aid that my heart longs to deliver. If only by your grace it was allowed."

"Then I have one thing that I would yet ask of you, Annatar."

"Anything."

"You are newly come to these lands, so you proclaim, upon errand from your master out of the West. Yet you speak our tongue with fluidity, with a practised ease that I would not look for in one newly come to these shores. Tell me then, how came you by such fluency?"

"You flatter me, my lady," Annatar smiled. "Too kindly you speak of me."

"Answer the Lady Gilthariel's question!" Corannon growled, yet after a savage glare from Celebrimbor he subsided into a grudging quiet.

Irritation flashed through Annatar then, but long ere such plans were formed he had thought up his lies, and they flew like silk from his tongue. "Languages have always come easily to me, my lady. Many tongues of more complex syntax and vocabulary prevail in Aman, and one must be fluent in all, for failing in such would be a grave discourtesy. My time spent in residence with the Lords Gil-galad and Celeborn, and the Lady Galadriel upon these shores has given me ample opportunity for practise in your noble tongue. Such lyricism it possesses, such flowing vowels… I only wish that I had opportunity to venture to these lands and learn it sooner, to enrich myself of its beauty…"

At that the Avarin elf at last stirred, and though his voice was quiet, it was not friendly. "You weave your words like cobwebs, Maia, yet honey drips from your teeth. What flies do you seek to ensnare within them?"

"None, my lord," Annatar replied, and desperately he stamped down the haughtiness which quavered in his tone. But though caution nudged at him to stop, pride spurred him to continue, and with an oily smile he said, "Save for those who might fly unwarily. Or those who dare the spider's patience."

A muscle in the Avari's cheek flexed, but to that answer he remained stonily silent. Yet a grudging and somewhat admiring chuckle emanated from not a few council members' throats.

"He is a fiery one, my lord," Vëantor remarked wryly, and the gauntleted _nis_ beside him nodded in agreement.

"He is _slippery_," the Avari hissed, and for the blankness of his eyes Annatar could feel the vehemence behind his stare. "His words may carry double meanings that we cannot fathom, or they may carry no meaning at all. Smoke and coils, spirals and knots, a twisted path he seeks to lead us down, and to follow might lead only to _ruin_!"

"Come now, Iskandar," the _nis_ said amicably. "You are unjust in your judgment. Annatar has presented himself fairly, albeit _boldly_, and where haughtiness leads one cannot expect abject submission from its victim."

At that Annatar's eyes narrowed. The Quendi had grown sharp in their word-plays as the millennia had turned, yet he was sharper still. So he endured their mistrust with a veneer of docility, and with a contrite, pleading look he sought for Celebrimbor's aid, a calculated earnestness he left shining in his eyes. But the lord seemed otherwise lost in thought; he gazed dazedly into the far recesses of the hall, and Annatar's ploy did not quickly avail him.

No matter, he thought, for certainly now he had their attention, if only their favour might be garnered a little more readily.

Quickly he wrestled down the rill of impatience that prickled through his chest as the council stared contemplatively down at him. Endurance would be his saviour here, he savagely reminded himself, and pride his undoing, and with a saccharine smile affixed across his features he looked pleadingly to the high table one more, to the lord who in the end would take the convincing. And to him Celebrimbor at last responded.

"The High King has spoken in ill favour of you, Annatar," he said slowly, carefully weighting his words to gauge the Maia's reaction to such news. "Might you tell us as to why this could be?"

If Celebrimbor expected some twisted flash of concealment, or some tiny, telling motion that would indicate a deception, then he was left sorely disappointed. For Annatar merely sighed, and genuine rue seemed to move him as he said, "High King Gil-galad is venerable and strong, and in many things he is wise. Yet in refusing the offer of aid that my master has presented to him I fear that his wisdom has been blinded. For a month I resided in his realm, alongside the Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn and their charming daughter also, and many things we spoke of in friendship. Yet for my sincerity, ever they seemed cold to my entreaties. I do not wish to speak ill of such esteemed Quendi, but I must speak plainly, my lord. Truly I am unsure as to why my offers were checked with such chill regard. I was displeasing to them in some way, perhaps? That was never my intent, though such things may come to pass."

"Displeasing?" Celebrimbor repeated, and a little more searchingly did his eyes run over Annatar's tall, lithe form. "In what manner may you have been displeasing?"

An expression of genuine distress broke over Annatar's face then; the light in his eyes flickered and dimmed as falteringly he blinked, and beseechingly he replied, "I… I do not know, my lord. I came to them as I do to you now, with the desire and purpose only to fulfil my promises, and to make my master proud."

"Then freely might we allow you to do so!" Celebrimbor announced, and in astonishment the council swivelled as one to face their lord. "My council," he continued passionately, "where others have cast their lot aside, why should we hesitate to grasp this opportunity? Their loss shall give seed to our benefit! Gil-galad was overhasty in this decision perhaps, for I see no harm in giving Annatar lodgings within my house and my realm. If indeed his promises hold true, and I have no good reason to see why they should not, then we will be enriched beyond our deepest desires for it."

"My lord," the burned _nis_ rasped, and solemnly she shook her head. "Perhaps we too act in rashness and not wisdom. If the High King Gil-galad, nay, if the _Lady Galadriel _gave pause in taking aid of Annatar then perhaps we should also. I do not think that they would lightly spurn a Maia come out of the West, and it speaks ill that they have."

"Pride often leads the heart astray, Lady Gilthariel," Celebrimbor replied sharply, and imperiously he looked out over the hall. "The Lady Galadriel seeks no boon of the Valar, and readily she would accept none, even in so fair a form."

"Is it pride that blinds hearts, my lord?" she persisted. "Or is it vain ambition? You have heard how this Maia speaks, my lord, you have seen how he weaves his enchantments. Even now his smiles turn to smirks; some cloying miasma hangs about him, and it blinds you to what you do not wish to see! This benevolence that he wears is but a mask for something far more perilous!"

"Accusations you spit, Gilthariel," the gauntleted _nis_ said heatedly, and with a well-suppressed glee set bubbling inside his stomach Annatar allowed her to argue his case. "What proof have we that Annatar is false?"

"What proof have we that he is _true, _Ennemirë?"

"The light of Aman shines within him," Ennemirë pronounced, and awe brushed through her voice as she gazed once more down at Annatar's form. For as the council had bickered, almost imperceptibly he had parted his lips, from deep within himself he had uncurled the tiniest swell of puissance, and he breathed it into the glamour that shrouded him. There he leached his power, and there it blossomed, it unfurled; it clung to his shoulders and sang of serenity, it gleamed in his eyes with such sage benevolence, it wove through the rings upon his fingers with the lure of promises to be fulfilled, with treasures unnumbered, glories beyond measure, of riches, temptations, _desires_…

"It is a false light," Gilthariel croaked, and her hoarse whisper sent Ennemirë tipping back into her seat with a shudder. About himself Annatar relaxed his enchantment, into a tender glow it faded once more, into an evanescent shroud that shifted and moiled so enticingly about him. "It is a witch-light. A forgery."

"Nay, Gilthariel," Celebrimbor said, and though his voice was firm, he gazed at Annatar with the lolling, desperate un-focus of one heavily inebriated. Hungrily he stared, recklessly, as though he wanted to crown the Maia standing before him even as he tore him apart.

"Nay," he repeated, and at the renewed determination in his voice the council subsided into cool silence. "I am the lord of this realm and this city, and I have made my decision. Annatar offers us a gift that would be foolish to refuse. Freely he has come, elegantly he has stood and endured our questions and indeed our _scorn_ with patience, and he has answered well. Are we to treat such a mighty artificer, one of Aulë's golden host who might offer us so much, as if he were some vile spawn of Morgoth come crawling from his hole? No. I will not have it so, lest it be said that my halls are filled with the crude and the discourteous.

I cannot speak for the counsels of my kin. I know not what has led the High King and Lady Galadriel to reject Annatar's boon, yet let such decisions be their own.

As Lord of Eregion I welcome you to my halls, Annatar, Aulendil, noble Maia of Aman! Here, under my protection, I would have you as my guest for as long as you should please yourself to stay. And if indeed you would seek to bestow upon us your wisdom then gratefully we would receive it! Lord I am also of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, the jewel-wrights of this city, and such knowledge as you might impart would enrich us beyond all measure. Be at ease within these walls, friend."

Graciously Annatar smiled, viciously he stamped down the great fizz of delight that boiled up inside of him, and merrily he said, "This I will, my lord Celebrimbor, and esteemed lords and ladies of the Council. Your generosity is without equal in these lands, and well I shall repay you for your kindness."

About the high table some faces grew stony whilst others grinned, but Annatar looked only to their lord.

"Good," Celebrimbor nodded, and fondly he looked down upon the rather chuffed Maia standing before him. "I have only one command of you, Annatar, for in all other things you are my guest and not my subject. I bid that you abide by the laws of this city laid down by the Council and I. Strange they may seem to one come from such lands of peace and plenty, but darker times fall upon my realm. Fell tidings out of the East reach my ears, creatures howl upon the moors at night, and evil things stalk the mountain paths when bright Arien departs these lands. The safety of my people is paramount, and none are to pass the walls of this city after nightfall save by my personal consent. Furthermore, all sightings of any foreign bird, beast or man are to be reported immediately to the city guard, of whom Ennemirë here is commander. Do I have your assent to these terms?"

"Readily, my lord," Annatar nodded. "Your prudence in such matters is admirable."

"Then we are agreed!" Celebrimbor grinned, and almost impishly he raised his head. "Welcome to Ost-in-Edhil, Annatar! May your labours here be fruitful!"

Before the high table Annatar bowed deeply; he sank forwards into a stray ribbon of ruby light that sifted in through the stained-glass windows, and his mouth was streaked over with vivid, bloody crimson as he murmured, "I am most certain that they will be, my lord."

"Excellent! Now, the hour grows late. Have you gear with you?"

"Some small possessions, my lord," Annatar replied, straightening from his bow with a small flourish of his fingers. "My pack and arms I left with your guard ere I entered this hall."

Celebrimbor nodded briskly, and as the council members sensed their unspoken dismissal and began to retire for the evening, Celebrimbor called, "Aethir!"

A few moments later a young elf strode into the hall, bowing smoothly as he drew to a halt at Annatar's side.

"Find our new guest suitable rooms, Aethir," Celebrimbor commanded. "Ensure that his belongings are brought to him quickly, and that he is made comfortable in all that he might desire."

"Right away, my lord," Aethir replied, and he nodded respectfully to Annatar before requesting that he followed him.

"Annatar," Celebrimbor called suddenly, arresting the Maia's rather saucy pirouette upon his heel into a slightly wobbled halt. A pained grimace caught for an instant over Annatar's face, yet quickly he squashed down his slighted vanity, and pleasantly he looked to the Elven lord who stood above the emptying table. "If it would please you, I will visit you in a few hours hence. I would know that you were well housed, and perhaps we might talk a little more extensively of what gifts you might have to bear."

Though phrased politely, there was no question in Celebrimbor's tone, and inwardly Annatar smirked. Yet smoothly he replied, "Of course, my lord."

And with a surge of pleasure that took every ounce of his self-control to repress he caught the expression of naked, burning ambition for an instant flare in the elf lord's eyes. Tightly he clung to his veneer of geniality; desperately he wrestled the triumph in his voice down to something that he fervently hoped sounded demure as he continued, "Your company would be a pleasure."

* * *

><p>Grey moths flitted about the candles that softly illumined Annatar's chambers, and as Celebrimbor knocked at the door the Maia's melodious voice bade him enter. Into a modest yet elegant suite of rooms set into a high tower of his house the lord stepped, and across the entranceway he spied Annatar lounging upon a low couch set before the balcony. A cool night breeze wafted through the wide, open arches, rustling at the pages of the book that the Maia was leafing through with one hand whilst poising a goblet of wine in the other. A slight smirk curled about the edges of his lips as he read, a strange, almost steely glint shone in his eyes, but as Celebrimbor approached, that expression transmuted into a radiant smile that lit up his features. The ever-present shimmer about him seemed to hum out its contentedness, and as if his mood was somehow contagious Celebrimbor found himself smiling back.<p>

"You seem very comfortable," he said lightly, and as he stepped a little nearer, with a fluid, feline motion Annatar swung himself about on the couch, shifting his bared feet from its end so that Celebrimbor might sit. "I trust that Aethir has provided you with all that you required?"

"Indeed he has," Annatar replied, and indulgently he grinned over to his host. He languidly straightened himself into a more formal sitting position, flicking the book shut behind him as he enquired, "Would you care for some wine, my lord? It is marvellous..."

"Certainly," Celebrimbor shrugged, and he wandered over to the open balcony to lean against its rail. Yet as he crossed the room, furtively he glanced down at the book that Annatar had been reading. The _tengwar_ lettered over its front were smudged with age, yet its title was still more than discernable, and at it Celebrimbor arched an eyebrow.

With two goblets of wine in hand Annatar moved to join Celebrimbor at the balcony, and in tentative silence for a while they stood, each sipping at their wine and beholding the countless stars unfurled in the clear sky above them. The moon shone full, illuminating the sheer crags of the hills in an ethereal silvery glow, and far beyond them the high peaks of the Hithaeglir glimmered like spires of liquid mercury. Below the balcony's sturdy rail the cliff scraped away to a vertiginous drop, and as the wind shifted Celebrimbor could just hear the great rush of the confluence far below wherein the rivers Sirannon and Glanduin mingled and whirled, before passing away as the Mitheithel to the south-east. A far-distant howl pierced through the peaceful night, a wolf screamed its hunger to the skies, and at its cry Annatar smiled softly. His shoulders slumped a little as he leant both elbows against the railing, his head bowed as the cry's echoes died away amid the broken hills, and the tranquil quiet flowed on unbroken once more.

"My uncle composed it, you know," Celebrimbor said abruptly, the words jumped unexpectedly to his lips, and Annatar's gaze shifted curiously to him. "The book… the poem that you were reading. The Noldolantë. The great lament of my people…"

"Your uncle was a talented wordsmith," Annatar murmured, and his gaze wandered to the distant hills once more. Absently he reached up with his free hand to rub at the side of his neck, and as his fingers met flesh he winced faintly. "He had a strong shield-arm, so I have heard tell."

Celebrimbor tilted his head in puzzlement. Many things were said of Maglor Fëanorion, but that was not common among them. The Maia took another placid sip of his wine, and with growing interest Celebrimbor watched him. Quite plainly, Annatar intrigued him; that much he would not even try to deny to himself.

The very manner in which the Maia held himself was foreign, it was new and powerful and ancient and pure all tangled together. The words that dripped from his lips were enticing; each hint of knowledge, of wealth or power or luxury that Annatar implied sent Celebrimbor's heart soaring with desire, each veiled barb or sly observation that the Maia wielded like spears served only to fascinate him the more. And yet entwined with the sweet and the sharp, there was somehow also the melancholy; a softness, a vulnerability that at times seemed to irradiate the Maia's very being.

It was downright _bizarre_, Celebrimbor thought desperately, as he tried to wrestle his straying thoughts back into coherence. It was _unnatural_ to feel so deeply, to feel so poignantly and so complicatedly for someone who was in all aspects yet a stranger, but still it was. Strangely, stupidly, blindly, inexplicably, something about Annatar made Celebrimbor grieve for him. And yet all at once he wanted to possess him, devour him, take everything that he could give and rip it away and destroy him. Exploit him, protect him, befriend him, crown him; it all melded together into one confusing crush and for a while left him speechless.

After a few contemplative minutes Annatar at last roused himself, alertly he lifted his head to mark the passage of a squeaking little bat that flitted by the balcony, and using that small motion as a lifeline against the treacherous current of his thoughts, Celebrimbor forced himself back into polite conversation.

For a while they spoke in friendship, wine and words flowed easily between them, and they talked of many things. Celebrimbor told of the recent plights of his people; of flurried skirmishes with goblins in the mountain passes, of hungry shadows that roamed the desolate moors, and for a while their converse was grave. But joyously Annatar told of his metallurgy, of things that he had learned of his master and things more that he might teach, secret things of his own devising that his brethren dared not attempt, and with fawning wonder Celebrimbor listened to all that was said.

In return he wove tales of the ancient might of Beleriand, of the bravest of the deeds of his Noldorin kin. A dreamlike smile drifted over Annatar's lips as Celebrimbor spoke more cagily of his father, yet passionately of the deeds of his grandfather, and of all the greatness that they had achieved before their ends. Warmly the conversation blossomed once more, slicked by wine and genuine good humour, and for many hours they laughed and talked as friends long sundered.

Yet upon a time such pleasantries shifted; Celebrimbor leaned eagerly forward upon the couch where they both now reclined. His dark eyes sparkled with heat, his cheeks were flushed with wine, and a clumsy, almost wistful grin twisted over his face as he looked searchingly towards the Maia.

"Your eyes are mesmerising, Annatar," he murmured, his speech a little slurred with drunkenness, and graspingly he laid his hand upon the Maia's shoulder. Annatar stiffened as the elf's hand came down upon him, and he remained rigidly, painfully still as Celebrimbor continued, "They are full of shadows, but also full of light, like stirred chalices of molten gold."

An awful moment of silence rocked through the room, until forcibly Annatar smiled, and tightly he returned, "Thank you, my lord."

"They are very beautiful." The hot flush of Celebrimbor's breath tingled up the side of his neck as the elf leaned even further forward, and as best as he could within the elf's tightening grip Annatar turned his head aside.

"You flatter me, my lord," he said stiffly, subtly trying to twist his shoulder free of the elf's hold. "Such words are praise beyond measure, and of them I am undeserving."

"Might a craftsman and a lord not appreciate beauty when he sees it?" Celebrimbor's voice had grown sharp, his fingertips pressed uncomfortably hard into Annatar's shoulder until at last the Maia swung back around to face him. And for an instant the look of anger, the look of rage and hurt and such unfathomable _hatred _in Annatar's eyes robbed them of their beauty, it set them ablaze in ugly flames.

_Do not touch me. _

The words erupted in a gout of pain within Celebrimbor's skull, it felt as if someone had slammed a hammer into his stomach, and that sudden agony sent him reeling backwards in shock. His hand leapt free of the Maia's shoulder as if his tunic had scalded him, and instantly that pain subsided, it vanished so utterly, so quickly that Celebrimbor was not entirely sure if it was real, or just some aberrant, potent delusion brought on by the wine.

As he looked back to Annatar his mouth tasted soured, his head throbbed unpleasantly, but an instant later a dreadful concern lanced through his heart. For if he felt unwell, then all the more Annatar looked it. Ashen-faced the Maia sat, staring off into the star spangled night, and it seemed that a great weariness had been tipped suddenly upon his shoulders.

"I'm sorry," Celebrimbor whispered at last, as the silence that stretched between them became cavernous, became unbearable. "Annatar, I am sorry… I - If I have caused offense then I meant nothing by it. I am not sure what possessed me…"

The breeze blew Annatar's hair across his face as he turned aside, and his words too were veiled as he sighed, "It is all right, my lord. The fault was mine. Such words… such words should not be met with cold regard." For a moment Annatar wavered, it looked as if he were about to say something more and earnestly Celebrimbor watched him. Yet such torrid hopes went unanswered as the Maia stifled a yawn, and wearily he continued, "Might I beg your leave for the night, my lord? The hour is late, and I have journeyed far this day."

"Of course," Celebrimbor said apologetically, and hastily he arose from the couch. "If we may meet on the morrow, then? Two hours past noon, in the central hall of the House of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain. I will have Aethir escort you."

"It would be my pleasure," Annatar purred, and as his host bade him good night and departed, he meandered over to his bedchamber, plucking up the discarded book from behind a pillow of the couch as he did so.

The pressure of the elf's touch still lingered unpleasantly upon his shoulder, and his smile curdled into a scowl as he tried to shake that sensation away. Not in millennia had he been touched like that, so derisively, so _possessively_, and the mountains of this earth would crumble into dust before he permitted some filthy elf lord to ever do so again. Mistrust, arrogance, conceit, ambition; these things he could twist, these things he would cozen and stroke and charm to his own purposes in anyone fool enough to cross his path. But this, he wondered, slowly dampening the candles as he wandered his way to his bed, this was… unexpected. Perhaps the glamour that he had woven about himself was altogether too alluring, as for a moment the elf's such brazen, _unwarranted_ attentions had caught him entirely off guard.

However, some small, smug thing in him chimed suddenly, such attentions were not without use. That thought grew in his mind, and elegantly he stroked its vain little fire. For if this elf lord in his arrogance, in his oh too delicious blindness chose to tumble so willingly into his trap, then why not let him? Encourage him, entrance him, swallow down his own disgust and snare the lord yet deeper. It would not be so great a sacrifice, after all. Conducted upon his own terms, it might even be amusing. And if laughs and touches and flirtatious little smiles would help to grease the ruinous pathway that he wrought then all the sweeter might be the elf lord's slide, all the more gutting might be its end.

To the morning then, he thought, and a gluttonous smile curved over his lips as he stripped off his tunic and settled himself comfortably within the bed. The book he flicked back open across his lap, but though his eyes scanned over the printed words, his thoughts raced far beyond them.

To the morning then, and to whatever new games the dawn might see begun.

* * *

><p><em>I really, really hope that you have enjoyed the beginning of what promises to be a very fun little series! The next chapter will be up just as soon as I can get it written (provided you don't all turn around screaming 'oh god no stop!') And as usual, all comments are treasured! Yours, theeventualwinner.<br>EDIT: Thanks guest reviewer who pointed out that I needed to watch my plurals vs singulars in Sindarin. Your help was much appreciated :3_


	2. Invidia

INVIDIA

The afternoon light shone drear and grey through the thick banks of cloud that crawled across the skies, casting a gloomy pall over the streets of the Elven city. As agreed, Celebrimbor's steward had collected Annatar shortly after midday, and Annatar now followed him quite amicably as they strolled through the upper levels of the city and towards the halls of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain.

Ost-in-Edhil was of an unusual design, Aethir had explained as they walked beyond the outer gates of the lordly estate and out into the city beyond. Rarely did the Noldor deliberately choose to inhabit such hostile terrain as the stark hills of Eregion, and under such circumstances their typically gentle city planning was thrust aside in favour of practicality.

Celebrimbor's noble house perched upon the pinnacle the hillside; a marvel of stonemasonry emulating the glimmering spires of Gondolin that had long since been scoured from the world. Its walls were sculpted of pale peach marble imported from Belegost's now-ruined quarries, and its surfaces moiled with a beautiful pearlescent sheen that the Noldor in their skill had coaxed from it. The house stood proudly framed by an expanse of terraced gardens sliced into the hill's steep sides, and beyond them the city proper sloped away in all towards all points of the compass.

Beneath shady arbours of willows and beeches, through the delicately sculpted streets of the upper courtesan's circle Aethir led the way, and eagerly Annatar listened to what he told as he appraised the buildings and roads about him. Never before had he set foot in an Elven city that was not shattered by war, whose stonework was not left rent and crumbling, and its slain left bloodied and mutilated in the streets. It was interesting in a clinical sort of way, he supposed, to appreciate what for so long he had sought to destroy.

At the slightest hint of encouragement Aethir would chatter quite merrily away, pointing out intricately carved statues of the heroes of old, of famed warriors of Nargothrond and Gondolin with their weapons held aloft, or of the Valar captured in elemental form; a preening eagle, or a rearing horse, or a fleet deer. From them Annatar subtly turned his face, with far more interest he looked to the stores along their winding route that stocked wares of all manners; herbalists who boasted cured vines, exotic skins, and foreign alchemical compounds imported from the furthest jungles of Rhûn, dressmakers who embroidered silks and furs with such finery that the fashionable maidens of the city might swoon to wear them, cartographers who claimed to possess charts and maps to navigate even the broken tundra of the North, and at the arrogance of that particular supposition Annatar stifled a rather haughty smirk.

The city thrived on commerce, Aethir remarked proudly, and Annatar nodded as they skirted a large plaza centred about a pool containing an opulent fountain of two rather ambitiously intertwined dolphins. The riches of the Dwarves of nearby Khazad-dûm imbued the city with wealth, Aethir told, and Ost-in-Edhil's strategic position amid the rugged northeast of the Noldorin territories commanded the major trade route in gemstones and precious metals over both land and river. By wain and by barge, such goods and craft were brought and disseminated through the inhabited North, and all flowed first through their city's markets.

At last he and Aethir emerged onto the great parapet that girded the city like a belt, dividing the orderly courtesan's circle from the more frenetic marketplaces below, and despite the grim lour of the skies the view was nonetheless impressive. A grey, curved ribbon of glittering water to the east marked the passage of the Sirannon, its stream running swift with melt-water from the shrouded peaks of the Hithaeglir, and as he leaned out over the ramparts Annatar could just make out the squirming movements of men and wagons along a wide, dusty track that wound beside it.

"The East Road, my lord," Aethir remarked, following Annatar's line of sight. "Towards Hadhodrond, that is Moria, and the mines of Khazad-dûm it runs, just over two days travel by wagon. A great portion of my lord's trade flows thence, before passing away southwest by the Glanduin towards the Mannish settlement at the Crossing, or northwest by road to the dwellings of our kin. Long have we fostered friendship between ourselves and the Hadhodrim who dwell under the mountain, and the wealth that we have share in is beyond count because of it."

"It seems an unlikely allegiance," Annatar frowned, and he squinted over at Aethir through the sudden gust of wind that blew his hair in a messy blond veil across his face. "About the High King Gil-galad's halls," he began anew, rather irksomely brushing stray strands of hair from his cheeks, "I have heard the Hadhodrim spoken of with contempt. Naugrim they were named, and there seemed little love for their people in the Quendi of those lands."

"We have worked hard for our cordiality, my lord," Aethir said carefully. "Old quarrels have sundered our peoples, and many still clutch to those grievances tightly. But my lord Celebrimbor and his council are eager to see ancient turmoil laid aside in these new days. The Longbeards of Moria descend from Dúrin the Deathless in direct lineage, they founded the mines of Dwarrowdelf above blesséd lake of Kheled-zaram in ages long past, and they have grown mighty in their craft. In peace and friendship they offer to us a great wealth, both in coin and in knowledge. Elsewhere it is said that the lord Celebrimbor was over-eager in his judgement of alliance, yet ever opinions will dissent…"

Aethir trailed off, his lips quirked as if somehow he feared that he had revealed too much, and at that expression Annatar's eyes narrowed. Yet he held his peace, and with that little curl of knowledge left to brew inside of him he looked out over the city once more.

The precipitous drop below them was broken by roofs and turrets shaped in a clash of eclectic styles; quilted canvas tents and corrugated metals clustered at the bases of regal minarets, markets lodged between rows of elegant theatres and taverns, stables and barracks crammed next to fine, tall towers of polished stone. Busy streets squeezed through the crush like throbbing veins shot through some great quivering muscle, and somehow Annatar felt soothed by the sight of them.

For unlike Gil-galad's austere city amid the fens, unlike the abandoned tree-dwellings of the vagrant Laiquendi or the crumbled ruins of the Sindar, unlike to even the ghostly spires of Minas Tirith upon its haunted isle that he had ruled millennia ago, this city felt _alive_. Its very foundations seemed rich, seemed puissant; _deep we are delved_, the stones seemed to rumble, _high we are built, fair we are wrought, while they live among us._ Its energies felt paced, its pulse beat with the cries of traders that drifted upwards upon the breeze, with the hammers and stitches and saws of craftsmen, with the throng and mill of crowds far below, with the amorous smiles and flirtatious touches of two young elves who strolled hand in hand across the plaza behind him.

An envious smile hinted at the corners of his lips, his eyes glinted in the sour daylight as an unlooked-for swell of melancholy rose in his heat. For though so different, so pale and so accursedly _Elven_, some things remained the same. Smudges of smoke billowed up from foundries far below him; the acrid tang of metal was borne upon the breeze. However distantly, the city reminded him of home.

After a short while Aethir led him onwards, winding further west through the placid echelons of the upper circle until finally they came before the doors of an immense hall. Its domed roof sloped away before them; it dwarfed them in its sheer grandeur. Great carven pillars were set at its forefront in creamy marble, delicate murals or spiralling abstract patterns were picked out in threads of shimmering silver and gold across their expanses, and at the undeniable skill of the metalworking Annatar nodded appreciatively.

Up the grand stairs and through the doors left thrown open to the day he followed Aethir, emerging into an entrance hall no less decadent than its exterior. Above and about the doorway spells of forging and power were laid into the stone, lanterns of a swirling, intricate design were studded into the walls, and they spilled a muted glow across the flushed marble underfoot. The very air seemed to prickle over Annatar's skin as he crossed the threshold, and almost subconsciously he tugged the sleeves of his robe further down to cover himself. A shiver of an ancient puissance passed through him, and cold then grew his wonder. For though the Noldor of this city were but poor remnants of the high families of the West, a vestige of their youthful power resided within these walls, and it instinctively warded itself against him despite his fair glamour. Sourly he acknowledged it, and with a slight curl of his own puissance he slipped it from himself, and he kept his face carefully impassive as he felt that strange pressure at last withdraw.

"Annatar!" A rich, merry call distracted him from such thoughts, and with lightning-quick fluidity he righted his mood. A slick smile spread over his handsome features as he spotted the elf lord who had hailed him. Clad in plain yet well-made working attire Celebrimbor strode over, and he smiled welcomingly as the Maia shook his outstretched hand in greeting.

"It is the highest of honours to embrace you into the halls of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain," Celebrimbor said expansively, and fondly his gaze wandered over the entrance chamber before settling upon his guest once more. "I trust that you are well?"

"Exceedingly," Annatar replied. "Aethir was just acquainting me with some of the sights of your fair city. Truly it is a marvel."

"I am glad that you find it to your liking," the lord smiled, and he turned to relieve Aethir of his duties as a guide, and bade him return to his tasks within the main house. The steward bowed politely as he was dismissed, and as his footsteps receded across the marble he left Annatar and Celebrimbor alone amid the wide, airy splendour of the hall.

"Come, walk with me," Celebrimbor beckoned, and coolly Annatar slipped into pace beside him as they strolled across the hall and down a wide corridor that branched from it. "Here is the principle work place of our guild, the People of the Jewel-smiths as we name ourselves. Many talented artisans ply their trade within this city, hoping to spin riches for themselves or win renown for their skill, and the very finest of them we invite into our fold. Smiths we house, metallurgists and jewel-cutters, masons and stonewrights, all of whom could rival the works of my people in the prime of our years. Some also who show promise in their youth we take on as apprentices, and here tutor them in whatever trades they desire to learn. Under my patronage, and that sponsored by the city's commerce, we craft here what we will."

As Celebrimbor spoke Annatar gazed contemplatively at his surrounds, his eyes lingered upon the glimpses of the ongoing works through the open doorways that blinked past him as they traversed the corridor. A shower of phosphorescent sparks burst and spluttered like dying little stars as an elf quenched a livid brand of steel into a pot of viscous, greenish liquid; hammers thudded and crashed upon anvils, their wielders cast into shadowed silhouettes before the crimson glow of great furnaces left to burn, and the air about them shimmered in oily waves with their heat.

"Here the wealth of this city, of my people, is concentrated. The most precious of gemstones delved from the depths of the mountains are polished in these halls, the finest of the Gonnhirrim's _mithril_ that they will consent to part with runs through our forges, and here we shape it."

They clove through a knot of chattering apprentices who hastily bowed and scurried out of the way as the lords strode through them, and almost without breaking breath Celebrimbor continued, "Under this roof some of the greatest works of our time have been smelted. The keenest swords have been whetted, the brightest jewels have been set amid kingly crowns, and they have made us the envy of all who look upon us. Even the skilled wrights of Gil-galad's regal court could not hope to compare to our mastery… I can only wish, I can only _dream_, Annatar, that the knowledge that you might bear will further augment such prosperity, it will swell us with wealth and renown."

Annatar made some neutral noise in the back of his throat; he was far more interested by a huge slab of obsidian glass that a young _nis _was sculpting in a nearby workroom than the arrogant preening of this elf lord caught up in his delusions of grandeur. His halls were fair, his forges were adequate, there could be little argument of blatant fact. But in Annatar's mind there were foundries far greater.

Concealed in his barren, broken lands to the East he had fashioned immense forges of iron and steel that glowed and seethed in their subterranean malevolence, ferrous mines gouged into the earth like wounds, great wheels of industry were turned by arcane pressures that he channelled up from the tortured, squirming bowels of the earth. His furnaces were not stoked by coal but by the raw heat of molten rock, the grinding anger of fiery Orodruin he harnessed and made his own, he distilled its hatred into his own vengeful projects. And for all this newfound might such things were but mere shadows of the colossal foundries that pounded still in his dreams, that lay now dead and cold under the ruins of another age.

These Elven forges were but playthings, laughable little pastimes to be tinkered with and then cast aside, and a sudden swell of churlishness rose in Annatar's heart. Was this truly the best that the Noldor had to offer? It was almost unfair of him to bother with his deceptions, if _this_ was to be the dull backdrop to them. Yet such annoyances must be endured, he chided himself, and the shimmering aura about him grew thick as his thoughts twisted to gluttony. Encourage them, he thought, take these elves and beguile them, impress them, ensnare them within their own petty ambitions and there watch them thrash as he bound them yet tighter. Watch them twitch and jerk as he throttled the life from them.

Side by side he and Celebrimbor rounded a sharp corner, and the abrupt change in direction jolted Annatar to alertness once more. The elf peered at him quizzically, still waiting for a reply, for the assurance that he had not deigned to give. Swiftly he amended himself, and even though the repetitions were beginning to grate, affably he said, "My deepest apologies, my lord. I was momentarily lost in thought. Of course I will impart to you all that I might, for so I have given my word, and I am no traitor to promises once made."

With that Celebrimbor seemed satisfied, and for a while longer they wandered the halls. Celebrimbor proudly gave tour of the store-rooms of metals, gems, and alchemical powders; of the blast furnaces at the rear of the complex manned by burly, sweating elves clad thickly in flameproof leathers, of the arc furnace stoked by the whispered incantations of a lone thaumaturge, and the molten _mithril _that poured from the furnace's chute shone as brightly as the spell upon her lips.

Ever Annatar kept up a pleasant stream of conversation, asking questions where to him it felt appropriate to express curiosity, and Celebrimbor answered him well as they walked, pleasure stirring his stern features to gladness as the Maia seemed genuinely intrigued by the doings and functions of his guild. Greetings and mumbled 'my lords' washed over them as apprentices and nobles alike passed by upon their errands; Corannon clapped Celebrimbor warmly upon the arm as he wandered past sporting some magnificently singed eyebrows, and as Annatar shook his hand it was all that he could do to stifle the vindictive mirth that came bubbling up his throat.

Down an airy, wide passageway to the rear of the main house they went last, and midway down it came to an abrupt pause as suddenly a door to their right was flung open beside them. A billow of colourless smoke heralded the lunge of a panicked apprentice to a position of relative safety beside the gently steaming doorframe, and a look of utter mortification crept over the young elf's face as he noticed the two lords staring at back him. Yet before any could speak, a deep, raucous laugh emanated from inside the smoky room.

"Well, laddie!" a hearty voice boomed, and the apprentice positively quailed to hear it. "That'll teach you to label your compounds properly! Now, get your cowardly arse in here and clean this mess up! By Mahal's beard, if more of you mixed up your lithium and rubidium there'd be a good shot less of you…"

A bump and a slight fizzing noise preceded a string of rather creative obscenities, and with a terribly sheepish expression upon his face the apprentice slunk back into the room.

Annatar's eyebrow rose in bemusement as he looked to Celebrimbor for an explanation, but the lord just rolled his eyes and sighed, and continued on down the corridor.

"Narvi," he remarked a few paces later, yet for his disparaging tone, a true note of friendliness underpinned it. "One of the famed stonewrights of Khazad-dûm. He has been my guest for a month or so now, in return for a favour paid to him and to his lord under the mountain."

"He seems a lively fellow," Annatar nodded, and Celebrimbor grinned at him in response.

"He does take a rather vicious pleasure in whittling my apprentices down to size. Some of those alchemical reactions he so enjoys teaching are near lethal when performed incorrectly… Ah, but strength to him! He is a most goodly dwarf, an enthusiastic instructor and the most excellent of company. You will like him, I think," Celebrimbor finished fondly, before opening a gilded pair of doors set into the very end of the corridor and striding through them.

"My workshop," he intoned simply, and placidly Annatar trailed him through the doors. A modest forge glowed in the far corner, an orderly line of leather-wrapped poker handles emerged from its cherry-red mouth to overhang a small anvil set nearby, and upon several sturdy benches laid along the walls of the room was arrayed the typical clutter of smithcraft; protective clothing, stones, tools and a multitude of minor apparatus occupied nearly every inch of space over their surfaces. Daylight filtered in from a great circular window set high into the northern wall, and the shadow of the wrought window-panes threw an eight-rayed star to hover in monochrome glory over the centre of the floor. Across it Celebrimbor walked, a sudden twinge of nervousness plucking through him as he sat himself before a bench and picked up the item upon which he had spent the morning working.

A small circlet of silver gleamed within his fingers, woven with an intricate design of wafer-thin metal teased into a delicate, open circle; a pretty bracelet to be worn about the wrist of a fashionable young _nissi_ of the court. Almost abashedly he turned it within his hand, he tried to smooth down the edginess that clutched at him as he waited for the Maia to react, to show some sign of consideration, of acceptance of his workplace. This room typically kept private now seemed awfully exposed. Of what he expected of Annatar, of what exactly he _wanted_ he was unsure, and the Maia stood poised with such fey elegance before him that it made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. The air seemed to close with expectation, Annatar's gaze was unearthly, and desperately Celebrimbor held to the bracelet as he waited, with painful, childlike hope searching Annatar's face for the approval that he so suddenly, so fervently wished to see.

Annatar's reaction, when at last it came, was tranquil, but it set a warm glow of triumph washing through Celebrimbor's stomach. For he simply smiled, a mellow light seemed to suffuse him as his eyes skated about the workroom, and as those wondrous golden irises settled at last upon him Celebrimbor found himself stifling an unbidden shiver.

"You are a skilled silversmith, my lord," the Maia purred, inclining his head to indicate the bracelet that Celebrimbor fidgeted with. He meandered over to examine it more closely, and the esteem, the encouragement in his eyes sent a great swell of happiness through Celebrimbor's heart. And, no matter how hard he might have later denied it to himself, it sent no small measure of _relief_ rushing through him as well. Deprecatingly he smiled, for such was the allure in the Maia's voice, such was the terribly sensual note sent thrumming within it that it made his head swim. It banished what suave words of thanks he had marshalled and it dragged up something entirely different in their stead.

"My father named me Tyelperinquar," he murmured, almost coyly he smiled, and an instant later a pink blush touched the very tips of his ears as he realised what exactly had just come over his lips. But Annatar merely chuckled, a delighted grin curved over his face as he leaned back against the edge of the workbench.

"That is quite a mouthful," he said teasingly. But where ordinarily such words would have stung, they would have seemed barbed and venomous and Celebrimbor would have replied with acrimony in kind, with Annatar leaning there so casually, quite unexpectedly Celebrimbor found himself smiling shyly back.

"Well," he began archly, trying to salvage what of his lordly composure he could, but the Maia's smile was just so _mischievous_… "Um… I – I used to go by Tyelpë. My uncles used to call me that. But you could call me that too, if you wanted. I mean… if…"

It was almost too cruel, Annatar crooned to himself. One subtle curl of puissance and he could have this elf lord on his knees, he could make him beg for him, keen for him, _bleed_ for him. It would be so achingly simple. But where then would be the fun? So he simply thinned the glamour that enshrouded him, and evenly he replied, "As you wish, my lord."

"You…" Celebrimbor faltered, he blinked at Annatar as if somehow he appeared different, as if he had suddenly stumbled into some blinding stream of light. "You don't have to use the honorific, you know," he continued more steadily. "You are my guest here. You are not subject to me."

At that Annatar looked surprised, perhaps even a hint of embarrassment flickered over his handsome cheeks, and softly he replied, "Thank you, my - … Thank you, Tyelpë. I will try as best as I am able. But I am afraid that old habits linger, and in ones as ancient as I they are not easily broken."

Celebrimbor shrugged then, with a far more decorous air he turned aside, and as Annatar wandered away to examine the jars of gemstones and semi-precious metal blocks that were arranged over a distant bench, he took up a small pair of pliers and began to tease and curl the strands of metal.

"Is it a sterling alloy?" Annatar enquired, waving to the circlet in Celebrimbor's hand as he poked through a small jar of purple amethysts. "Or do you typically work with rhodium plating?"

"Neither," answered Celebrimbor, and he squinted hard at the mesh of silver strands before delicately shifting one to a more graceful slant. "Here it is commonplace to substitute metallic germanium in place of a percentage of copper within the alloy. The Hadhodrim distil it from their scrap copper ores, and when smelted into a common sterling alloy it imbues the silver with more desirable qualities."

"Resistance to firescale…" Annatar mused, his eyes narrowed as he tried to recall the properties of such an uncommon element and its rather esoteric uses. "It will not tarnish so easily… But does it not render the silver too rigid to be worked?"

"It can be problematic if the metallurgist is not accurate in their measurements," Celebrimbor said quietly. "Such a smooth metal becomes so _difficult_…"

"Then your craft must become more guileful to match." At the sudden intensity in Annatar's tone, Celebrimbor glanced upwards, and from beside him the Maia smiled so disarmingly at him that for a moment Celebrimbor felt as if he had been winded.

"You mask your expertise in modesty, Annatar," he murmured at last, with some difficulty swallowing down the throatiness in his voice. His heartbeat drummed in his ears, all too keenly he became aware of Annatar's proximity, and hard he fought down the urgent impulse to reach out and just for a moment touch him. "You should prove no mean smith either, if so skilfully you are able to offer advice upon the most obscure of alloys."

"You flatter, my lord." The Maia's voice was low, seductive; his words seemed to hover in the air for longer than their natural wont. "Yet I have always loved silver the best, in all of its forms."

"Really?" Desperately he struggled to banish the hunger from his voice, almost drunkenly he stared at the Maia's handsome form; the honeyed fall of his hair, the auric rings across his clever fingers that seemed laden with such potential, the golden glitter in his eyes that was so dangerously alluring…

"It seems…" he began anew, pausing to clear his throat from the huskiness that clotted it, to wrestle his straying thoughts back into orderliness. "It seems to me that gold is more to your tastes."

For a moment Annatar seemed to falter, some indeterminate expression flickered over his face, but his voice was level as he replied, "It is a comely metal in its elemental form: pliable, ductile and stately indeed. Yet it is to silver that my heart has always been drawn. It is gentler perhaps in its sheen, yet it is far more versatile. Under a stern hand, it is far more _malleable_."

A thrill of unwise desire crawled up Celebrimbor's spine at the Maia's last, soft, word. Yet quickly he mastered himself, he tamed the treacherous stream of his thoughts and bound them, and he forced himself to continue speaking upon subjects of altogether more functional occupations.

* * *

><p>On that first day they spoke of many things together. Celebrimbor talked at length over the standard practises of Noldorin smithcraft, and to this Annatar listened intently. For while many of the principles remained the same as the practises which he commonly employed, the Noldor had developed new smelting and jewel-smithing techniques of their own in the years of their exile, and with them Annatar resolved to familiarise himself. But where Celebrimbor talked of the common difficulties that they encountered in their craft, he began to offer what preliminary solutions came logically to his mind, and eagerly then did Celebrimbor hearken to him.<p>

Wondrous seemed his words, they belied a strange, foreign logic that was at once repulsive and intuitively attractive, and as the weeks turned, the hints and possibilities that Annatar spoke of coalesced into realities. Ways of artificing and of jewel-cutting he taught that yielded gemstones brighter and clearer than any yet wrought by the Jewel-smiths' hands, such was the grace with which he set and strung them amid glimmering nets of woven metals that in those hours they near proclaimed him a god. Yet for his skill that became more undeniable by the day, ever Annatar was pleasant, no hint of arrogance or haughtiness marred his features as he worked among all echelons of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain's ranks, and freely he would advise whomsoever might ask for his wisdom.

Seminars he would give to the shy apprentices who braved themselves to ask for his aid, patiently he would reward them, and such was his way among them that at even a hint of his praise they would blush and duck their heads aside. Upon more personal projects of the senior members of the House he would consult; arcane methods of smithying thought by the Noldor lost to the annals of history he saw revived and utilised once more, and for it their craft was greatly enriched. Jewellery, weaponry, wares, metallurgy; upon all subjects he would speak with wisdom, and eagerly the Noldor would follow where he led.

To their lord the most ardent of his attentions were given, and often he could be found at Celebrimbor's side if he was not otherwise occupied. Though at first they fenced about each other, their conversations thrust and parried as do all fledgling friendships forged in uneasy times, as the days rolled by a true sense of camaraderie began to unfurl between them. The elf was not _so_ hateful, Annatar persuaded himself; his company was not _un_pleasant. Upon matters both frivolous and grave they would speak into the late hours of the night, companionably they would ride together through Eregion's wandering valleys, and cross or heated words were rare between them.

Ever an air of taut flirtatiousness hovered between them, so sharp it seemed almost uncannily natural. For Annatar's glamour was cunningly woven, subtly he cast his snares when the opportunities arose, and Celebrimbor tripped heedlessly into them.

The luxury in Annatar's smile seemed to set some tiny flare of heat to prickle in his stomach if ever the Maia graced him with it; the casual brush of his arm as they walked together seemed to linger for far longer than it should upon his skin. With increasing frequency he would have to catch himself, he would have to force himself to concentrate upon the grain of the metal that Annatar might be discussing, or the smoothness of the ring he was forging, of the modifications to the blast furnaces that he was expounding upon, instead of letting more sensual thoughts sway him.

For years uncounted thoughts of such nature had scarcely crossed his mind; passing interests in a few of the courtly _nissi_ proved to be just that, and for years longer he had thought himself quite uninterested in intimate encounters with either sex. Yet more and more he began to notice the shapeliness of Annatar's body; the strong muscles that clenched and flexed under his tunic as he moved, the smiles that played over his lips as he spoke, as he whispered, as he laughed. The tilt of his hips as he leant against a bench or a wall was so playfully charming, the slight furrow of his brows as he concentrated was so oddly endearing, and the press of his hand over Celebrimbor's own as he corrected his grip upon a chisel sent a swell of unbidden arousal throbbing through him. Less did he come to find the Maia's occasional slip into formal titles to be unsettling; he found himself relishing in every 'my lord' that purred so softly over his lips.

He began to wonder what else Annatar's lips might do.

What other utterances might slip over them, he thought. What sharp little gasps of pleasure might he elicit with a caress, with the press and heat of his body against the Maia's own. What unlordly noises might tumble from those lips if but once he might take him, possess him, kiss him, worship him; what aching light would simmer in his eyes if one day he toppled him, crowned him, pressed him down into the pillows of his bed and _fucked _him…

Coldly he thrust such fantasies from himself, he tried to expunge every cloying trace of their temptation even as they seemed to seep into his skin. Such feelings were _unseemly_, he told himself firmly, they were wrong, they were ill-becoming of a noble lord and most importantly they were _unrequited_. Annatar was a guest, _his _guest, and never would he impose himself so violently upon another if his affections were unwanted.

And yet…

Annatar could be fey and obtuse when he so chose, that much at least Celebrimbor had deduced of him. He would flatter, he would tease and hint and toy until at the last he would withdraw, he would leave such awful desire cramping through Celebrimbor's innards that more than once he almost broke, he almost had buckled. But pride had asserted itself with a vengeance within him, with steely decorum he had wrestled down those thoughts that he dared not cozen, that he dared not question the origin of, and steadfastly he clung to Annatar's friendship. But for all that the Maia remained aloof of him, never truly did he rebuff him, and that tantalising sliver of hope ever preyed upon Celebrimbor's heart.

* * *

><p>The crescent moon shone thinly through the slurry of the clouds, casting a sickly wash over the steep, frosty slopes. The wind moaned through the gullies and ridges that cracked over the high passes of the Hithaeglir, and within their depths, evil things stirred. Fell jaws opened, thin tongues licked over serrated teeth as the things wakened, as luminous eyes slitted open in the gloom. For centuries they had endured amid the caves of the mountains, they had lurked in the hollows of the hills, and by moonlight they hunted when their bellies grew cold and empty. Yet now they were glutted, through bloodied meat and flailing limbs they had crunched not a week before, and it was not hunger that now drew them from their dormancy.<p>

A scent was borne upon the breeze, a message scrawled in an ancient tongue and through blackest sorcery disseminated upon the winds. The words lapped and tickled at their gnarled ears, through skull and hide the message flitted, penetrated, _commanded_, and instinctively the creatures understood. They hearkened to the words, these feral beasts that scourged the mountains and made obeisance to none save their own savage delights roused themselves from their slumber. Unveiled under the night sky they emerged, bones cracked and fur bristled as they stood, and as one, they obeyed.

* * *

><p>Annatar at last stepped away from the balcony, a wearied expression clouding over his features as he wandered back into Celebrimbor's sitting chambers. The lord, from where he sat entrenched behind his writing desk leafing through the seemingly endless accords of the city's renewed trade agreements with Forlindon, Vinyalondë and Mithlond that Tirlossë had presented him with earlier, paid him little heed save for a slightly puzzled glance. After one final glance over, Celebrimbor quickly lettered his name upon the documents and stamped them with his seal, before bundling them together with a neat length of ribbon and setting them aside.<p>

Annatar meanwhile had sunk himself deeply into one of the plush couches that were positioned about Celebrimbor's stately room, sprawling there tiredly as he reached for a glass of sparkling cider that was placed upon the low table before him. The bittersweet tang of the drink upon his tongue helped to soothe him, it numbed away the acrid taste of sorcery and as he arranged the pillows more comfortably behind his back he noticed the elf subtly eyeing him from his desk. Celebrimbor, for his part, made every attempt to be surreptitious, yet as his eyes lingered across Annatar's body he felt his gaze become more certain. The jewel-studded rings that the Maia wore shone so marvellously against the duller metal of the cup in his hand, the heels of his boots were perched so elegantly upon the wooden arm of the couch, the slight part of his thighs as he reclined was so terribly alluring…

Quickly Celebrimbor stifled such thoughts, he tried to dispel the familiar squirming sensation that turned in his stomach, and as his eyes flickered to Annatar's face a sudden concern brushed through him.

"Are you all right?" Haggardness clung to the Maia's usually smooth features, and limned in the faint wash of the moonlight he looked all too pale. "Annatar?"

"I am fine," the Maia replied, somewhat throatily, before quickly swallowing down a large mouthful of cider. A sheen of bubbly liquid stuck upon his lips, and for one sickening moment it looked as if his mouth were slicked in bile as he continued, "Do not concern yourself with me. This day has been… full of labour, both in body and in will. Yet it has brought its triumphs. It seems almost an age since the sun has risen…"

"You press yourself to hard," Celebrimbor said concernedly, for truly Annatar's scattered trail of speech perturbed him. "Take some rest if you need it."

"I am fine," came the distant reply.

"Come," Celebrimbor tutted, and a more playful tone lilted in his voice as he teased, "What shall my people say of me as a host, then? That I run my guests ragged, flaying their knowledge and skills from them as if they were but slaves to pleasure me?"

The elf scoffed derisively, but a supercilious smile curved over Annatar's lips. He yawned widely upon the couch, before leaning over to refresh his glass of cider, and he lifted it up before him to idly appraise it as he steered the conversation elsewhere.

"Of late I have noticed a trend among the younger apprentices," he remarked casually, swirling the cider within his cup and watching as the little bubbles burst and fizzed before him. "They wear a remarkable array of adornments about their ears, both _neri_ and _nissi_ alike. Studs, cuffs, rings, and others of stranger make. Is it a custom among your people to adorn yourselves thusly?"

"What? Oh – " Of instinct Celebrimbor's hand flew to his ear, where several elegant rings were pierced through his helix alike to those which Annatar had described. The Maia watched his movement curiously, and with a sigh Celebrimbor arose, milling about his desk and settling himself upon a couch laid perpendicular to Annatar's about the table, and helping himself to the cider in turn. "Well," he continued, "it is not a custom, per se. Perhaps you might consider it more of a fashion? The waxing and waning of trends…"

Annatar looked quizzically at him, and almost self-consciously Celebrimbor fiddled with the rings in his ears. "Do you… do you not do alike in Aman?"

"It is not a common thing among my kindred, no," Annatar replied. "I merely wondered…" The ghost of a smile touched his lips, but the simmer in his eyes belied more than the simple friendship that his words wove. "Such fashions suit you well, my – " Hastily Annatar caught himself; Celebrimbor was not quite sure whether he was disappointed or delighted by it, and smoothly he continued, "_Tyelpë. _They are most handsome piercings."

At the sound of his name emphasised so carefully over Annatar's lips, a shiver of most definite pleasure slid down Celebrimbor's spine, but desperately he tried to hold on to composure as he murmured, "Thank you."

But that look, that damnably, innocently seductive look in Annatar's eyes drew the words from him, like slippery eels they were hauled over his lips before he could quite restrain them. "They would suit you too, I think. Maybe… I mean, if…"

The stumble in his voice was cringe-worthy even to himself, but graciously Annatar smiled, and with an air of such devastating nonchalance he dug his hooks in just a little bit deeper.

"You flatter me, my lord," he replied, his voice soft and low. "But I could never hope to compare."

A blush mottled over Celebrimbor's cheeks, and abashedly he buried his face in his cup. He fiddled again with the rings in his ears as the silence between them stretched on, Annatar was quite happy to leave it there to curdle, until at last the elf muttered, "My father made them for me, when I was young."

"Then he was a skilled smith himself," Annatar said, yet a he spoke a strangely resentful look came over Celebrimbor's countenance. "They are kingly gifts."

A long silence seeped through the room, a silence filled with only venom, until bitterly Celebrimbor said, "My father was no king."

A frown crossed Annatar's brows, he raised himself up and twisted about on the couch to face Celebrimbor more easily, and into the well of acrimony that he had quite unintentionally stumbled across he delved cautiously. "You speak as ones estranged."

"Did you ever meet him?" Celebrimbor snapped, and something terribly close to desperation quavered in his voice. "He used to frequent Aulë's halls, with my grandfather. Long, long ago…"

"I did not have the pleasure."

"Then you cannot know truly of what I speak. He was…" Words failed him, an angry spasm quirked over his lips, it felt like someone had sewn his throat shut with wire, and his knuckles grew white and bloodless as his fingers clenched about his glass.

But sagely Annatar nodded, something about him seemed for a moment to mellow, and a wince of genuine sympathy curled at the corners of his smile. "Yet still you love him."

"My father was a difficult person to love," Celebrimbor spat, and he glared down into the frothy remnants of his cider.

The quiet between them became slowly biting, but into it Annatar finally murmured, "He treated you cruelly?"

"No," the elf sighed, "No. It's not that. Well… no. Insofar as, he never struck me. He was not hurtful, not physically, though his tempers were… frightening. But perhaps it was his disappointment that was the cruellest."

"In what way would you have disappointed him? Many skills you possess, and in many traits you are admirable and strong."

"I was not always as I am now," Celebrimbor pronounced bitterly, and his gaze wandered to the cold night skies framed above his balcony as he spoke. "In my youth I was different. More wilful, perhaps, stubborn. Spiteful, even, I have heard it said...

Expectations were laid before me, but I wished not to be so rigidly bound by them. My father demanded excellence, rigour, in things that he deemed proper for a prince of the royal house to be educated in, to the exclusion of all else. I was supposed to be his heir, his prodigy, the silver-handed scion of the great Fëanáro come again to Arda, and I… I wished to have no part in it.

I did what was expected of me, many things I wrought and I made, for a talent in smithcraft was impressed, nay, _enforced_ upon me. But ever I did so with dispassion. Ever my father was frustrated with me. It was a waste, he said, a bloodline squandered, a legacy despoiled…"

Celebrimbor's lip curled, and sorrowfully, hatefully he continued, "There was this look in his eyes, and I knew that I had failed him. I would learn of all manners of ancient lore from the great scholars of Tirion, I would commit it to memory or when I was older I would publish it anew, and when I spoke to him of it he would merely nod and smile blandly. I would ride with my uncle in his hunts, I would bring down the prize stag with my own arrow and my father would turn away in disgust. Ever as I pursued my own interests, as I achieved my own purposes, it was drowned in the weight of his _failure_."

A chill breeze rustled through the room, deeply Celebrimbor inhaled, and at last Annatar murmured, "I am sorry."

"Don't apologise."

"I only meant – "

"I do not want your sympathy," Celebrimbor said sharply. "I do not want your _condescension_. Failure ill-becomes me, I have little patience for it and I entertain it not. Perhaps my father has shaped me for better in the end, or perhaps not, but that is a matter aside. I have exceeded his expectations of me. I have led my people through a cataclysm of his creation. I have forged this realm alone, I have given them a sanctuary from the perils of the world and I have made it prosperous. By my own hand, by _my_ will alone this was achieved, and I will suffer no sycophantic smiles for my efforts."

"My lord," Annatar intoned, and a sudden spiral of hope bored through Celebrimbor's heart as the Maia inclined his head respectfully. No trace of disdain marred him, no soft sorrow moved him; evenly he met Celebrimbor's stare as he raised his head, and for that Celebrimbor was grateful. A strange tension lingered between them for a moment, before wearily Celebrimbor sighed, he ran a hand through his hair and a short, rueful laugh jumped to his throat.

"I have not spoken of such matters for years," he began slowly. "They are heavy counsels…"

"Then I thank you, my lord," Annatar replied, and searchingly Celebrimbor looked to him. "For deeming me worthy to bear them."

At that Celebrimbor did not know whether to smile or to silently grieve, and for a while he did not respond. Yet after a few minutes of tender silence between them, at last he murmured, "Are you truly a friend, Annatar?"

It was almost painful to smile back, to affix a mellow grin across his face when so desperately he longed to tear it off, to assume himself, declare himself, take this whining elf lord and dash him bloodied across the stones. But stoically he pushed aside such temptations, though he had cast his net he was far yet from reeling it in, and into the glamour that shimmered about him he pushed every ounce of earnestness and false, lingering supplication that he could.

To one knee upon the floor he twisted himself, a hint of enchantment played upon his lips as he took Celebrimbor's hand within his own, as he raised it up and kissed him softly upon the knuckles.

"In all things, my lord," he said quietly, demurely, and the words poured like silver over his tongue. "In all things I am your friend."

Fluidly then he stood, he swiftly bade his goodnight and exited the lord's chambers, leaving nothing but silence in his wake, and Celebrimbor staring hungrily after him.

* * *

><p>A huge thank you to those of you who were so supportive of the first chapter of this little enterprise, and I hope that the second lived up to the standard. Until next time, theeventualwinner! x<p> 


	3. Gula

GULA

"_You are mine, little one."_

His master's voice is so devastatingly tender; it sends a dark swell of desire rolling up through him. And how he gasps in delight as his master kisses him, he sends a mewling cry of pleasure pouring down his master's throat as so slowly his master pushes him down upon the bed, as he parts his thighs, raises his hips, as with such exquisite care his master enters him. So hotly, so slickly his master's stomach presses up against his own, so powerfully his master holds him down as his back arcs into that sensation.

Ashen hands grip about his wrists; a bleating, panting series of whimpers ripple over his lips as he feels his master withdraw, and so gently, so lovingly then he feels his master push back into him.

Deeply his master kisses him, languidly he rolls his hips, and every nerve in him shrieks out its ecstasy with each new contact. His cheeks flush pink as his master builds his rhythm, his fingers clench into desperate, trembling fists about the sheets as those wondrous sensations swirl and meld and stoke within him, and through the lingering press of their lips he can feel his master smile.

Tenderly, fiercely, their lips part; a jagged moan of arousal scorches up his throat as his master's mouth wanders, as a simmering constellation of biting, nipping little kisses trails down over his jaw, runs down the side of his neck.

"_You are mine," _his master breathes, with one fluid roll of his hips pressing yet harder up inside of him, and the filthy groan of pleasure that erupts then from his throat could have brought the mountains toppling down around him in their shame. His master's thrusts rock him into the bed, every flex of muscle only pushes him down further, deeper, harder, faster, and into that sordid well of sensation he simply melts.

His eyes flicker shut in his rapture; his master's breath tingles over his neck, over his lips, every buck and coil of his hips sends such seething delight coursing up through him.

"_Mairon," _his master croons, over and over again his name pours from his master's lips, slick and deep and low and visceral, and with each utterance such happiness, such completeness flows through him. His master is here, his master is his, in all of his sweetness and all of his pain he is _his_, and a moan of adoration tumbles from him as once more his master breathes his name.

But slowly his master's voice changes, some subtle quality in it shifts, hot and torrid still it is but it becomes tinged with something else, something strange. And between his thighs his master's rhythm falters, it slips and regains itself but somehow then it is made different.

"_Mairon," _his master pants, and something dreadful now sounds in his voice, something _vile_, and so desperately he wishes to claw it from him, to recoil, to mend what has been done. And gradually each thrust up inside of him becomes painful, loving still but sharp, gutting and wrong and hurting. "_Mairon, please. We don't have much time…"_

"No," he moans, pain sends the word leaching from his lips, and as he squirms his master's fingers become biting upon him, they close like manacles about his wrists. "No, stop…"

A spray of dust comes shivering down from the ceiling; it veils his master in a deathly shroud of grey. And below him the bed, the stone, the earth, it all groans, it seethes and rends and tears in its agony, and as he feels its convulsions he rides them, he snatches their momentum to try to push his master from him. Every muscle in him trembles with the effort of it as he writhes; his shoulders lift from the sheets only a few inches before his master slams him back down, and the dull impact of flesh upon stone knocks the breath from his lungs.

"Stop…" he gasps, he pleads, as the ache of that force seeps through him, deadens him, immobilises him but for the scrape of his back across the bench with each agonising thrust up inside of him.

"_It is too late."_

His master's voice is horrifying, thin and torn and warped, and with every ounce of failing strength left to him he tries to pull away as his master rams into him, as his master hurts him. Every instinct in him screams at him to move, but he can't, he just can't, he can only lie there paralysed as the dust comes shaking down, as the screams flicker through his ears, as the bellows and horn-calls and that chilling, awful _scratching_ fills the chamber. He can only lie there on that cold stone bench and be split apart.

"S-stop…" he sobs, the tears fall hot and stinging down his cheeks as he lies there pinned, as he lies there aching, as his master's every grating move against him brings only soreness, as every slam up inside of him is a violation, an abuse. And the screeches only come louder, the horns blare out their triumph as he starts to bleed, the door buckles under their fury, it rips from its hinges and he _screams_ as his master comes inside of him, as it tears him apart…

x x x

The candles dotted about Annatar's bedchamber burst into incandescent little gledes of flame as the Maia's eyes jolted open, as the breath caught in his throat, as he scrabbled up into a sitting position amid the tangled sheets. The cool night air seemed sticky upon his skin, he pressed a hand tenderly to his lower stomach and he winced at the soreness that he found there as the last reverberations of that dream, that awful, cloying dream, quivered through him.

He exhaled one slow breath; gently he unclasped his hand from his stomach, and as the ache gradually began to dissipate from him he settled himself more comfortably against his pillows. The scrambling horror of his mind slowly smoothed over into serenity, the talons of the dream grew blunted, and more sagely then he glanced about his bedchamber.

The moon shone through the gauzy curtains that were draped over the arched doorframe that led out to his balcony; it hung like a smudged, silvery orb upon the fabric that rippled in the cool night breeze. For a while he sat still in his bed, emptily he gazed upon its ephemeral form, and a sudden shiver of loneliness clawed through his heart.

The city was too quiet at night, he thought. The wind moaned over Eregion's high fells; it snatched up what sounds of quiet industry or goodly chatter that might prevail and it dashed them to the merciless rocks. It shredded what impious noises might dare to challenge the silent night, and it sent a chill through Annatar's heart. These lands were no allies to him, he thought sadly. This city would never be his home.

His home had been taken from him.

His lip curled sourly, his gentle gaze out towards the moon curdled into a scowl, and a familiar glow of anger kindled in his stomach. Long ago it had been, but it might well have been yesterday for all the solace that time had brought him. For the Noldor in their arrogance, in their selfishness, in their bloodstained pretences of divinity had marched upon him that final, ruinous time. Their piteous whining, their slaughters and their tantrums had finally moved the idle Valar to act, to make unjust, hypocritical war upon him and his people, to raze from them their kingdom and cast them broken and mangled to the cruel claws of the world.

These elves, Annatar thought bitterly, they seek only to possess, to devour in their greed.

Fitting then, he smirked thinly, and the candles about the room crackled with his wrath. He would reap what hateful seeds that so long ago they had sown. He would scythe through them until their entrails bloodied their grand houses, until the streets ran foul with charnel, until –

A strange noise from the balcony yanked him from such thoughts, and quickly he roused himself from his bed, casting aside the gauzy curtains until he stepped fully into the outdoors. The stone was icy under his feet, the breeze lapped at his loose bed-trousers, and he crossed his arms over his bare chest as he frowned out towards the distant horizon and the red streaks of the coming dawn.

Yet as he glanced about he could discern no source of that noise, and he was almost about to retreat back into the warmth of his bed when a slight scuffle sounded from somewhere above him. Instantly he whirled, his eyes darted upwards, and came to an unexpected lock upon the beady gaze of a plump raven that perched atop the shingles of his roof.

He sighed then in relief, yet no small amount of puzzlement raced through his mind, and he leaned back upon the balcony's railing as the bird swiftly took flight, arcing about in a wide circle above his head before fluttering to stand upon the railing beside him. Curiously it gazed at him, its inky eyes examined him, until with a very contented-looking wriggle it shook itself, stretching and re-folding its glossy wings as it stepped tentatively towards his arm.

"You are a long way from home," Annatar murmured, looking down at the raven with something akin to fondness in his eyes. Not all birds were loyal to the Windlord, that he had learned in ages long past. For amid his shadowy halls carrion birds of all sorts were like to roost, they had scoured the skies above the mountains and plucked from them the Valar's spying eyes. Some subtle scavengers had dared even the nests of the Eagles themselves, the cunning _corvidae_ would snatch up eggs and crack them open to feast upon their innards. Upon wings dark and swift, messages between the strongholds of the North had been passed, and beside him now the raven _tokked. _Its head tilted as it gazed up at him, and it shuffled a little closer, its long talons tapping upon the railing as it walked.

The bird nudged gently at his arm with its beak, and a strange chittering sound clattered out of its throat. Almost reproachfully it stared up at him, and wearily then Annatar sighed.

"Soon, youngling," he murmured, outstretching his hand to allow the raven to perch upon it. Eagerly the bird stepped to him, it preened itself proudly as he turned to lean facing the horizon, and its feathered chest puffed out like some glorified little general as he spoke to it.

"Soon," he said, and his eyes glimmered red in the glare of the dawn as he promised it. "Our time will come again, and we will be as kings in these lands, as warlords of blood and marrow and revelry."

The raven's eyes gleamed, it cawed a triumphant little _tok_ into the air, and at it Annatar smiled.

"Now," he said, "you are a clever one indeed, if clad even in this form you have recognised me. You wish to be of service to me? Then gratefully I will command you. Gather your brethren, sweetling. Take flight now, and from the far corners of Ëa bring those who are yet faithful. Bring those who will hearken to their lord's command, and slake your beak in the blood of those who will not."

The raven's claws dug little furrows into Annatar's hand, and so deliciously that sting served to move him, it served to guide him in his treacheries. For before him the raven inclined its noble head, and eagerly it turned to the lightening skies.

"Go now, youngling," Annatar said sternly. "May the shadows serve to speed your wings. For to you this now I swear. Soon we will be glutted. Our enemies will pay for what they have stolen from us."

From his hand the raven leapt, its proud wings unfurled and caught upon the breeze, and with a caw it sped away east, his grand little vassal set abroad in all the perils of the land. Gladly Annatar watched it go, and silently he bade it luck.

Slowly then he wandered back to his bedchamber and began preparing from the day, though the hour yet seemed cruelly early. The Council of Ost-in-Edhil was called for a meeting, fortunately freeing him from Celebrimbor's clutches for the day. His other projects and consultations amid the Gwaith-i-Mírdain could hold for a while, he mused, arranging himself before a tall mirror set into the corner of the room and running a comb through his slightly sleep-mussed hair. Perhaps it was time to uncover what other amusements the court of Eregion might hold.

* * *

><p>An arrow thudded into a man-shaped dummy at the furthest end of the archery range, sending a small puff of straw-dust billowing into the air with the impact. Annatar squinted balefully after his arrow, appraising its heron-feather fletching left quivering in the dummy's chest. It had been extremely pleasant to discover that even after centuries of disuse his skills were not far diminished from the days of his might, yet these Elven arrows fitted oddly to his string.<p>

His own bow he had brought with him out of the deepest foundations of Lugbúrz as its slow construction continued in his absence: a splendid recurved weapon with slender arms of polished yew wood, and a core fashioned of the ivory tusk of a colossal _mûmak_ slain in the deserts of Far Harad, its head gifted to him by the chieftain of those lands in tribute. The kingly weapon then he kept strung with dark horsehair, and it had served him well upon his long journey west. Yet his arrows had been depleted amid the wilds, and from the store-master of Celebrimbor's armoury he had borrowed a fresh quiver some weeks before.

Slowly he plucked up another arrow and nocked it to his string, rolling out his shoulders as he sighted for the dull ink-mark that denoted the target's sternum. Fluidly he aimed and drew, the bow hummed with pressure in his hand as the arrow scudded through the air and embedded itself with a satisfying crunch into the dummy. A fair shot, he judged it, yet imperfect. These arrows seemed almost to squirm against him, they shuddered and quailed as they were set to his string, and it was only with a concentrated effort of will that he could master them and send them soaring true.

The pallid sunshine limned his bare arms in its radiance, his customarily rich attire cast aside for the freedom of movement that a sleeveless jerkin might provide, and he reached for another arrow. As he nocked it, faintly he was aware of footsteps descending the marble stairs to the shooting galley, but he paid little attention to them. His eyes narrowed, the gold in them gleamed as he found his mark, his string drawn and the pressure left coiling through the muscles of his right arm as for a moment he held.

"What are you doing?"

The unmistakeable tone of Celebrimbor's voice sounded from behind him, yet the elf's words seemed strangely ephemeral; they scarcely served to distract him as he focused his will upon the arrow.

"Practising."

With a victorious grimace he let the arrow fly. It buried itself with an immensely satisfying thud into the dummy's straw head, clean through the ink mark that denoted an eye socket.

A gleeful, sadistic light seemed to blaze for a moment in Annatar's eyes as he turned towards the elf lord, yet quickly it was smoothed away into friendly regard as readily Celebrimbor smiled at him.

"You have no mean skill with a bow," he remarked appreciatively, his gaze shifting to the numerous arrow-shafts that punctured the unfortunate dummy.

"Thank you, my lord," Annatar replied softly, and almost coyly he glanced down at the bow in his hands. "I have always enjoyed hunting, when my work would grant me leisure. For it is such a thrill, is it not? To chase, to pursue… To outwit. Many creatures we would hunt, the fleet and the swift. The _arrogant_…"

"What?" Celebrimbor's voice sharpened at that last, rather disconcerting, turn of phrase, but Annatar smiled at him with such genial pleasantry that quickly he was soothed.

"I jest," the Maia purred. "For whom has not hunted the stag who thought himself uncatchable, the boar who thought himself indestructible? They learn of their folly in the end, as do we all."

A thin smile quirked at Celebrimbor's lips, he was not entirely sure that Annatar's words were all that they superficially seemed, but as if sensing his dissonance Annatar stepped forward brightly.

"Would you care for a try?" he asked, his magnificent bow proffered in his hand.

"Nay," Celebrimbor said affably, shrugging down at himself and the heavy, billowing robes that garbed him. "I am hardly attired for sport. Continue, I bid you. I would see what you can do."

Readily enough Annatar turned, taking up a fresh arrow and raising his bow. Yet even as he drew he could sense the lord's gaze lingering uncomfortably across him. Far too easily did it rest upon the play of the corded muscles in his arms, upon the curve of his hips as he twisted, and it took all of his concentration to bite down the disgust that came clambering up his throat.

Swiftly then he loosed, the arrow flew, and embedded itself at a slightly crooked angle through the dummy's stomach. Annatar tutted in vague dissatisfaction; a serviceable shot, yet hardly elegant, but behind him he heard Celebrimbor scoff.

"A shame," the lord said teasingly. "Perhaps you are not as good a shot as you think you are."

Irritation glowed in Annatar's stomach, slighted pride scratched beneath his skin, and almost without thinking he whirled about, he grabbed an arrow and nocked it, with a vicious growl sending it whizzing through the air not a millimetre's breadth from Celebrimbor's ear.

"Am I not?"

The percussion of the arrow's passing seemed to graze across Celebrimbor's skin, for a moment utter shock gripped him and it rendered him speechless. Yet swiftly that paralysing surprise faded from him, a rather unlordly splutter of affront burst over his lips, but with it some sordid skewer of delight punched through his stomach.

"Fuck!" he exclaimed, and at such an unexpectedly crude word to come tumbling over his lips Annatar's grin widened. "Fuck… Annatar, you - … What - what sort of a game do you think you are playing at?"

"An amusing one."

The Maia's eyes glittered, yet for the roguish charm of his voice Celebrimbor felt his throat begin to tighten, he felt the familiar flush of arousal prickle through him, and desperately he tried to squash it back down.

"What… what if you had missed?" he said shrilly, a look of such delightful outrage plastered over his face as his hand instinctively came up to rub at his cheek, to run in self-reassurance over the intact helix of his ear.

"I did not, my lord," Annatar replied evenly, before turning to nock another arrow and send it flying towards the dummy, spearing it through the throat.

"But what if you had?" he insisted, but even to himself now his words sounded forced as his initial furore began to drain away.

With one arched eyebrow Annatar turned back to him, such innocent mischief glistened in his smile as he drawled, "Then I would be apologising profusely, my lord. Yet as the matter stands…"

Celebrimbor scoffed as haughtily as he could, he drew himself up to his full height and imperiously he looked down upon the Maia. Yet for all of his inflations of grandeur, with a glance Annatar undid him; what resentful words he might have snapped withered in his throat, they sank into the simmering pit of desire that bubbled within his stomach. So golden Annatar was, so pure; so fey and fickle and infuriating and untouchable, so desperately Celebrimbor wanted to please him, and that confusing twist of emotion found him averting his eyes as the Maia met his too-overt stare.

"Well," Celebrimbor eventually muttered, the words huffed into his collar. "No harm done, I suppose…"

"Of course not, my lord," Annatar said smoothly, but elegantly he bowed. "I apologise if I have caused offense."

"No, Annatar," Celebrimbor sighed, and graciously he raised the Maia from his obeisance. "The fault was mine, my friend. I – I overreacted… Think no more upon it. Let no tensions mar the air between us. Now, if you might excuse me. The rapacious needs of my people beckon. We host a party of Gonnhirrim upon the turning of the week, and matters of relations must be seen to."

"An excellent occasion, my lord," Annatar said, and the slight look of relief that moiled across his face sent Celebrimbor's heart soaring. "I look forward to it."

For a slight, awkward moment Celebrimbor paused, eagerly he awaited what more might flow from the Maia's lips, but as Annatar fell silent he swiftly caught himself. Amiably he nodded, he bade Annatar good day, and the tantalising smile with which the Maia treated him gnawed at his thoughts for far longer than might be deemed prudent.

* * *

><p>The coming of the Gonnhirrim, the Stone Lords, to Ost-in-Edhil's grand halls was no less decadent than expected. Celebrimbor's larders were laid bare; every manner of wine and mead and spiced liqueur was dragged up from the cellars, great haunches of beef and venison turned upon honeyed spits, platters of roasted pheasant and partridge were nestled atop the tables already groaning with breads, cakes and vegetables in a myriad array of dishes. No expense had been spared in providing the most sumptuous of banquets to host the Hadhodrim, for to cause offense or discomfort in the least to Ost-in-Edhil's chief trading partners would have been an grievous slight, and an intolerable failing of diplomacy.<p>

Therefore the hall was bedecked in kingly splendour that hearkened even to the days of Tirion in its grandeur. Great silk and velvet banners hung down from the ceiling; they were blazoned across the walls. Silver stars shone alongside the crossed hammers of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, and alongside them in brocades of richest crimson and gold were embroidered the sigils of the lords of Moria; the one-eyed boar, the carven diamond, the three axes, the knotted _wyrm_, and many more besides in majesty beyond count.

Laid lengthwise across the high dais, the lords' table commanded the room, and from its wide expanse the most honoured of Celebrimbor's guests had survey of the floor, where the lesser nobles and courtiers mingled in a lively, merry confluence. Upon a chair of burnished brass and plush ebony velvet Celebrimbor sat, his brow bound in a royal circlet of gold. Delicate strands of the metal dripped elegantly through his sleek hair, and a great ruby rested upon his forehead, its polished facets glimmering richly in the light as he talked amongst his guests. In dark, flowing robes of fur and silk he was arraigned, and animatedly he spoke with the noble Hadhodrim who sat upon his right; stout lords with their long beards most opulently braided, teased with ribbons of gold and glistening _mithril, _and laughter and wine flowed warmly between them.

Upon Celebrimbor's left Annatar sat, dressed no less finely in elegant robes of gold and cream, and coolly the Maia's eyes skated over the hall as he took a thoughtful sip of wine from his goblet. The Gonnhirrim were a strange people, he had swiftly decided, brusque and loud and raucous if his infrequent dealings with Narvi had taught him anything, but warm and fast in friendship, and in this city they displayed a readiness for talk and fair trade with the Quendi that he had long thought simply impossible. Never had he given them much thought in his designs, save for passing recognition of their existence, and faintly now he wondered if he had not committed a minor oversight. Never had the Hadhodrim sworn allegiance to him or to his master in the ages now lost, but they had only openly opposed him when foolish alliances with the Noldor had dragged them from their caves.

Perhaps, he thought, he should extend the invitation.

The Gonnhirrim guarded their secrets close, they turned their faces from the sky and opened their hearts to the earth, to its spoils; its metal and its gems and all of the beauty and wealth that such things could produce, and to that motive he could not profess himself to be unsympathetic. Yet for that idle observation, oh how he had exulted as a rumour had snatched past him earlier. The dwarrow lords muttered of dark things in the mountains, of wolves, of beasts, of omens; of prospecting parties who did not return from their ventures, of a pall of blood in their sacred Mirrormere.

With an air of sorrow he had listened, he had nodded compassionately at such grave news, and it was all that he could do to keep the triumphant smirk from his face.

His servants, it appeared, had not been idle.

Yet from him now the conversations had turned; Celebrimbor was engaged enthusiastically with the lords upon his right, and though he glimpsed several other members of the council about the high table or scattered amid the hall, none looked to him for company. So for a while he simply contented himself to sit, but soon enough he found himself sighing down into his goblet.

"You do not like?"

A strongly accented voice sounded upon his left, and blinking in surprise he turned to acknowledge the heretofore-silent dwarf who was seated next to him. Bright almond eyes stared up at him from beneath a geometric circlet of gold upon its brow, rosy cheeks were flushed merrily with heat and wine above a short beard braided into two elegant prongs at the chin, and the dwarf stared pointedly up at him. "You do not like?"

For a moment Annatar paused, unsure of quite how to reply, but words slowly trickled to him. "I – "

"Ah, it is no matter," the dwarf laughed over him, patting him merrily upon the arm as for a few perturbing moments he struggled for an appropriately decorous response. "Men-folk, my people, such grand feasts they like. But it does not please so well we of Durin's daughters."

Sagely Annatar nodded, but an instant later his brow furrowed as the dwarf's words truly sank in.

"Daughters?" he repeated incredulously, swallowing hard around the mouthful of wine that had caught in his throat in surprise.

Swiftly, surreptitiously, he glanced over the grinning dwarf, and beneath the swell of sumptuous velvets he fancied that he could discern a more womanly shape. Fancy or no, he told himself sternly, it would not do to be insulting among such company, and apologetically then he smiled. "I am most terribly sorry, my lady. I did not realise…"

"No," she chuckled, her eyes twinkling mischievously. "You fey-folk never do."

For a moment Annatar was silent, some grievously bewildered look must have passed over his face as the dwarf stroked the braided tips of her beard, for most heartily then she laughed, and she said, "I am called Aldvís."

"A pleasure," Annatar purred, swiftly casting his puzzlement aside as the conversation tilted back towards normalcy. "I am named Annatar, my lady."

A roar of noise engulfed the hall for once brief moment, and where Annatar blinked in consternation at the sudden din, Aldvís remained quite unfazed. "You are smith, here?"

"I am," he replied, leaning in close as the percussion of that roar yet bounced about the walls. "And yourself?"

"A smith also, yes," she smiled, twisting about to present an ornate silver ring inset with a gleaming emerald upon her chubby forefinger. "Rings like this I make, for my lord Durin under the mountain. I am…" Here Aldvís' voice faltered, her face pinched as she sought for the word in the Sindarin tongue, and at her Annatar smiled encouragingly. "I am… _captain _of his ring-makers. This how you say, yes?"

"You would be the _chieftainess_," Annatar proclaimed, and Aldvís giggled as he took her hand gracefully within his own, as he planted one cheeky kiss upon the great ring on her finger. "The ring is exquisite, my lady, yet not so fair as its maker."

Aldvís' cheeks blushed an impressive shade of crimson at his words, and daintily she withdrew her hand, turning instead to take a cooling sip of wine.

For a while then they spoke amicably, suddenly glad of each other's company. Aldvís fondly told of the wonders of her realm; the subterranean gardens where the shale splintered and whirled into roses of petrified stone, the great fountains of spring-water delved from the living rock where her kindred would gather and be merry, the catacombs of stalactites that lurked in the darkness like the serrated teeth of some slumbering beast, and only the bravest of her kind dared those deadly shards of stone for the gemstones that seamed them.

Where she faltered in language Annatar aided her, with genuine pleasure he listened to the adoration in her voice as she spoke of her home, yet a strange melancholy gradually clutched at his heart.

So suddenly, so bizarrely he wished that he could cast aside his illusions, his hollow inventions of himself. He would but once stem the lies that flowed over his tongue. He would tell her of the barren lands that he had come to love, in all of their ugliness and all of their splendour; the fiery plumes of Orodruin's wrath, the cavernous depths of his mines beneath the Ephel Dúath, even the grey waves that lapped upon the shores of Núrnen in the south of his realm. She would like them, he thought sadly, for what greater marvels of geology existed in these lands, in these times?

Yet purpose bound him to his lies, coldly he sluiced such desires from him, and if his smile grew frosty as he spoke of his deeds within Celebrimbor's halls then Aldvís did not seem to notice.

The hours rolled by, the hall swelled with merriment, until as the sun was dipping below the horizon a quiet was at last called. A space before Celebrimbor's chair was cleared upon the table, and a large, ornate chest was borne up the steps of the dais by four dwarves decked in shining livery, the kingly sigils of the Longbeards picked out in richest _mithril_ over their breastplates. Before Celebrimbor they laid the chest, then withdrew and bowed deeply in unison.

"A gift from the Lord Durin the Third," one of them spoke in a gravelly tone, "King of the Khazâd, Lord of Moria, the Dwarrowdelf, and the realm of Khazad-dûm. In token of the friendship and trade between our peoples he presents to you, Lord Celebrimbor Curufinwion, these gifts; worthy heirlooms of our people and a symbol of allegiance in this age."

At Celebrimbor's gracious beckon the herald stepped forward, he lifted the lid from the chest, and all peered curiously towards its contents.

Upon a plush base of black velvet, four grand knives were arrayed in the shape of a star, their blades extended outwards, and even Annatar's eyes widened as he beheld the skill of their craftsmanship. For each dagger was carved of a differently coloured stone, and together they formed a rich rainbow of colours upon the dark velvet.

"Malachite, from the great foundries of Erebor, my lord," the herald intoned, indicating the foremost knife that crowned the star; its blade of polished verdant stone swirled through with ribbons of black and fine threads of gold.

"Azurite, from the last quarries of Belegost," the herald continued, and Annatar's gaze flicked to the handsome blade of cobalt blue stone before trailing onwards. The next blade shimmered with a strange iridescence; its surface crawled with a yellowish sheen of a sunflower's hue, yet it seemed dusted with a glittering spray of silver. "Ammolite, from Moria," the herald said, "and here red carnelian brought forth from the distant Orocarni Mountains and our kindred there."

A vibrant red blade completed the star, its blade smooth and bloody. Annatar leaned further forward to admire it, and as he did so his eyes caught also upon a neat line of obsidian arrowheads that dotted the bottom of the chest, which the herald then announced. All murmured appreciatively as they beheld the weapons, yet as the court settled themselves once more, Annatar heard the faintest huff of disapproval emanate from Aldvís' nostrils.

Celebrimbor nodded most courteously at such noble gifts, and richly he proclaimed, "You will send to King Durin my deepest of gratitude. For truly these are gifts beyond measure, and I shall keep them with pride in remembrance of our friendship."

Before him the escort bowed low, and as they departed, the courtly chatter began anew.

Celebrimbor dived back into conversation with the dwarf lords upon his right, and to Annatar's left Aldvís reached sharply forward and took a long draught of wine from her cup. Her eyes narrowed as she looked over the arrowheads once more, her brows crossed into a frown, and quickly she clutched to Annatar's hand.

He started slightly as her small fingers closed about his own, and as he leaned in towards her she muttered darkly, "These they should not give."

"Why so, my lady?" Annatar murmured, casting an airy smile about the room as a few curious eyes strayed towards their proximity.

"They… they are not good to give. There is danger in them."

"Danger?"

Aldvís' fingers tightened upon Annatar's hand, with repugnance she stared upon the arrowheads. "Deep they come from. In Khazad-dûm, in darkness. Too deep. We do not go there, but the foolish. Obsidian glass they find there, but other things too. Greasy flames that melt stone. Things that rumble, things that _roar_. I do not like them, Annatar. It is treachery."

Deeply Aldvís sighed, and ponderously she continued, "There is shadow in the glass. There is flame. There is evil in the earth that birthed them. They are not good things to give."

"I see," Annatar said smoothly, and hard he fought to muzzle the swell of excitement that rose in him. Shadow and flame, he thought, and oh how the possibility, slender though it was, elated him.

Not all had been destroyed in the cataclysm, some such as he had survived the scouring of their home and had been scattered, slinking back to his service in the later years or becoming wild and feral if they could not. Shadow and flame. It almost pained him to entertain the idea, yet the gravity of Aldvís' words gave hint to their truth. If but one of that mighty race had lingered, if but one scion of the Valaraukar yet remained, if it could be made obedient, then what glorious terror might he yet sow.

But swiftly he stifled such ambition, he forced the sharp gleam in his eyes to fade, and amiably he turned back Aldvís.

"I thank you for your words, my lady," he said, "yet I think that there is naught here now to fear. These halls are light enough, are they not? Some tiny shadow such as these might but tremble at their brightness."

Aldvís' lips pursed, she harrumphed loudly, but quickly her face cheered into a smile once more as Annatar made some flattering jest, and he steered the conversation elsewhere as the merry night rolled onwards.

* * *

><p>The weeks turned, the Gonnhirrim stayed their welcome and provided their services, and in the wake of their departure Annatar resumed his works within the halls of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain. Still he would freely offer his advice in smithcraft to any that would ask, and for almost a month he laboured with Corannon to repair and modify their blast furnaces, through arcane spells and physical mechanics tinkering with small pieces of machinery to increase their temperatures almost dual-fold, and with such improvements Celebrimbor was delighted.<p>

New works they were able to see begun, alloys flowed through those furnaces that were not deemed possible to construct within their previous confines, and with the influx of such industry among their people both lord and Maia found themselves at leisure. For long hours they would talk together, strolling about the upper walls and quiet streets of the courtesan's circle, or sit in friendly company under a leafy arbour of the gardens while languidly they worked; Annatar sketching new designs of rings and jewellery after the Dwarven fashions of which Aldvís had so fondly spoken, and Celebrimbor luxuriated in his company while fulfilling the many clerical duties of state.

Often they would ride together among Eregion's winding game-trails, or out across the wild fells, and as he grew more familiar with the rugged lands Annatar would begin to take the lead. Over the windswept bracken he would spur them onwards, down narrow gullies filled with trickling streams and cascading waterfalls he would lead, whispering softly to the horses to ease them down the slippery slopes, and he would give his mount its head as it scented for home. He would thrill in its excitement as it galloped across the hillsides, as it pounded up the great winding road and back into the city, and only then would he trouble himself to check that the elf lord had kept apace with him.

One such afternoon, in the drear, clouded light they both clattered back into the stable-yard, Annatar a few paces ahead as Celebrimbor leapt down from his horse. The ring of the horse's hooves against the cobbles drummed still in his ears, his heart thudded in his chest as he lead the sweaty, excited creature indoors to the stables proper. It skittered next to him even as he laid a soothing hand upon it, blowing hard through its nostrils with the exertion of such a reckless gallop for home.

An exhilarated grin curled over Celebrimbor's face as he led the horse forward, through wind-raked, glowing cheeks he looked to Annatar who was lounging against his horse's shoulder, gently stroking the lather from its neck as it steamed in the cool air. So poised he looked, so regal; it set emotions to stir in Celebrimbor's stomach that for weeks he had tried to quieten, had tried to forget.

"Annatar," he breathed, the cold air seemed to scorch through his lungs as deeply he inhaled, as one final spike of adrenaline punched through him. "That was… that was amazing! How did you…"

"I am glad that you could keep up," the Maia purred, and at the honey in his voice such blistering arousal suddenly cramped through Celebrimbor's stomach that it was all he could do not to flinch with the force of it. So lascivious were his eyes, so light was his smile, and a blush that had scarce little to do with exertion began to creep up Celebrimbor's neck, it tinged the tips of his ears in rosy pink.

Hard he breathed, he scarcely noticed the groom that arrived and began to lead their horses away. He simply stared at the Maia in all of his aching, awful glory as he patted his horse upon its retreating rump.

A fond smile flickered over Annatar's lips as he turned back to Celebrimbor. But for his softness, the tilt of his hips was so dangerously alluring, the slight sweaty cling of his breeches between his thighs as so sordidly entrancing, and as the Maia then turned to leave a flare of jealousy burst in Celebrimbor's heart. That pivot upon his heel seemed just a bit too insolent, it was suddenly too much of a spurn, and hot, fierce desire blazed in Celebrimbor's stomach.

"Annatar, wait," he said, he _commanded_, and the slight curl upon Annatar's lips as he swung back around set Celebrimbor ablaze as he glimpsed it. Yet perhaps in that moment those fires burned too brightly; something visceral that for so long he had fought to cage ripped up from his stomach, a predatory smirk unfurled across his face, and with feyness to match any impudent Maia he stepped forwards.

The spurs of his boots clicked like talons upon the cobblestones as he stalked towards Annatar, and at the caustic, unearthly look in his eyes the Maia took one uncertain pace backwards. But oh how that split second of doubt caught across Annatar's face churned in Celebrimbor's heart, it rushed through him with writhing, victorious flames.

"Why do you recoil from me?" Celebrimbor growled. Something unhinged played in his voice, some terrible sheen of madness swum in his eyes as he forced Annatar back a pace, as in some perverse, creeping waltz he danced Annatar across the stable block's width with nothing but naked hunger in his gaze.

Annatar's back pressed uncomfortably up against a wooden stall, and though a grimace of displeasure flitted over his face, desperately he reined in the power that surged to his defence. It sparked upon his fingertips, it longed to be unleashed, to stop this, to end this, to make this elf bleed at his feet for ever thinking, for ever _dreaming_ in his arrogance that he could possess him, command him, threaten him.

But with every ounce of his willpower he quelled that impulse, and bitterly he clung to the air of fragile, innocent passivity that he wove about himself.

He steeled himself as the elf closed upon him, his hands clenched into trembling fists at his sides as the elf's knee pushed in between his thighs, as Celebrimbor leaned into him with such ugly yearning in his eyes.

"I only wish to… to talk," the elf murmured, the words rolling almost drunkenly from his lips. A little harder he pressed into Annatar, near crushing their hips together with his bulk.

"So talk."

The Maia's voice was smooth, but cold was his tone, and haughty his gaze. His golden eyes were filled with nothing but revulsion.

"You…" Celebrimbor breathed. The air seemed almost viscous over his lips, Annatar's proximity seemed to only stoke that pounding desire within him, and before the Maia he dipped his head, his gaze slipping to the sweat-sheened muscles that cleft his throat, the curves of his pectorals beneath his shirt.

Slowly Celebrimbor's hand came up, his fingers trailed lightly over Annatar's thigh, and beneath his touch the Maia flinched away.

Such unspeakable disgust burned in Annatar's stomach, his knuckles shone white and bloodless with the effort of tolerating the elf's hands upon him, as he frantically bit back the black words of power that would leave the elf gutted and broken and gasping on the floor. But to Celebrimbor it seemed only a coy reflex, the flicker in Annatar's smile seemed only fleeting shyness, and more firmly he pressed into him, his fingers stroking over the curve of his hip, over the slant of muscles that played beneath his shirt.

"You are infectious," the lord whispered, heavily, headily, pressing himself forward to croon the words into Annatar's ear. And how Annatar shivered beneath him, and as his fingers tightened about the Maia's waist Annatar leaned forward in turn, pushing their lips together until there was but a shiver of space left between them.

"_You are infected_," Annatar hissed, and a sudden swirl of nausea twisted in Celebrimbor's gut. His head for a moment seemed to swim as Annatar withdrew from him, as Annatar pushed him away, and such scorned, bitter, hateful fury erupted within him a split second later.

For how _dare_ Annatar refuse him?

_He_ was Annatar's benefactor, _he_ had welcomed him into this city where others would have spurned him, _he_ had gilded his path to the highest echelons of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, he had taken the Maia's aid and seen him glorified for it, and how _dare_ such generosity be refused.

He was Annatar's lord, he was his master; Annatar should revere him, love him, obey him; he should be down on his knees begging for his touch, for his caress, he should be between his thighs with his pretty lips around his cock savouring every last moment of his attention…

A flare of lust scourged up through Celebrimbor's stomach, he near growled with the force of it, but in Annatar's eyes now there was nothing but disdain, and oh how deeply they cut.

Sense crashed back into Celebrimbor's mind like a warhammer, it drenched him in its chill, it seized the ravenous torrent of his thoughts and it stripped them from him, it dissolved them and crumpled them and shattered them in its impact. An acrid taste sizzled upon his tongue, his lungs seemed to suddenly unlock within his chest, and with what seemed like the first time in an age he blinked with clarity. He felt that terrible, fey mood pass and he was left with only himself.

And what shock, what awful, strangling regret smashed through him then as he beheld Annatar just standing there against the wall.

For the Maia, his ally, his _friend_ looked at him with horror in his eyes. Crowned in innocence Annatar seemed, lovely and pure and fragile, and he had defiled it, betrayed it. The look of such subtle confusion, such childlike upset that crept into the Maia's golden eyes almost clove Celebrimbor's heart in two.

"Annatar," he whispered, his hands clenched at his sides with the vehemence of his apology, but at the poorly concealed expression of fright that marred Annatar's beautiful face quickly he softened, and such sorrowful regret bled through his innards. "Annatar, I'm sorry… I – I didn't mean…"

"There is nothing to forgive, my lord," the Maia murmured, but the words sounded hollow in his throat. Desperately, apologetically, almost blinking back tears of self-loathing Celebrimbor stepped towards him, but the flinch that rocked through Annatar's body brought him up short. For almost imperceptibly the Maia shifted away from him, his arms cinched in to cover himself, and with that tiny, horrifying motion Celebrimbor felt like someone had kicked him clean in the stomach.

"Annatar," he plead, he took one pacifying step backwards even as the words latched into his throat, horror hooked them there and guilt bound them tight. "Annatar, please. Please, I'm sorry… I didn't… I didn't mean to touch you like that, I didn't… I don't know what came over me. I don't know what – what _possessed_ me. Please, Annatar, _please_, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"

Indecision wavered over Annatar's features, and imploringly Celebrimbor looked to him. But perhaps in that moment the damage was already done, such blind, rash actions could not be revoked, for with downcast eyes Annatar mumbled, "Please, my lord, I… I think I need to be alone for a little while."

"No!" A sharp spike of jealousy, of possessiveness, of cruelty, stabbed through Celebrimbor's stomach, and even as the word burst over his lips he froze in horror. Desperately he tamed the craving that ached in his heart, the violence that roiled just beneath it, and softly he continued, "Please, Annatar, please don't go. Not like this, not… I didn't mean it. I _didn't_. I'm sorry…"

Yet for his pleading, the Maia regarded him with injured eyes, and without another word he departed, swiftly rounding a corner and vanishing.

Alone Annatar left Celebrimbor among the empty stalls, and so fervently he hoped that the elf lord was hurting. As he stalked past the tack rooms and farrier's workshops, balefully Annatar wondered if emotions could somehow become tangible, if he could take this elf's ruinous ambitions and his guilt and his lust and his pride and somehow weave them all together. Some dark, choking thing he could form and ram it down the elf's throat, watch him writhe, watch him suffocate; some sharp blade he could weld and with it peel him apart, leave him opened and glistening; screaming, begging.

Yet curtly he dismissed such fantasies. Even should it be possible then such overt and malevolent puissance here would see him unveiled. A shame, he thought. The metaphor would for now have to suffice.

Into the grey light of the afternoon he emerged, and fondly he thought of the bath within his chambers, of washing the stain of the elf's touch from his skin. Though, he reminded himself, abhorrent as it was, such things must be endured. This was a game of his own making, and it would be difficult now to change the rules even if he so desired. Nay, sooner or later he would accept the elf's apology, he would brush it aside and continue on with his deceptions, until with the crawl of the weeks their fencing about each other might begin afresh.

Let the elf grovel for a while, he fancied. It might even be amusing.

With that thought set aglow within him, far more contentedly he continued his walk back to the manor, through the sprawling gardens and to the gates that delineated the house proper. His hand brushed upon their grille as he made to step through them, yet as he made to proceed, from behind him there was a rustle amid the trees, a flutter of wings and the thin snap of wood.

Slowly he turned, his eyes wandered upwards, and perched upon the upper branches of a nearby oak tree two ravens sat, staring down at him with their beady, enigmatic eyes. One cawed softly in its throat, it shuffled its wings in smug avian triumph, and Annatar grinned up at it in response. Its partner cawed then too; it cast an appraising eye over him before seemingly satisfying itself, and it puffed its chest up proudly before taking flight, wheeling once over the gates before retreating east towards the horizon.

To the remaining raven he looked once more, his original messenger, his proud little general, and he inclined his head to it in thanks before slipping through the gates. And a few moments later, out over the spires of the house he caught a glimpse of the raven streaking away to the north-west, its black body passing like a dark shadow over the sun.

* * *

><p><em>Thank you as usual to everyone who's read this far! I hope you enjoyed this update (and the sneaky bit of Angbang that might have crept in there!) Until next time, theeventualwinner x<em>


	4. Acedia

ACEDIA

"Annatar?"

It took three days for the elf to come limping to Annatar's door: three long, withering days of caginess and forced smiles and unspoken resentments.

For the most part they had avoided each other. Annatar retreated into the depths of the blast furnaces alongside Corannon and Vëantor as they laboured upon further modifications to the machinery that might exponentially increase their heat capacities, and Celebrimbor was embroiled in some pressing matter of state or other, talking late into the night with Gilthariel or Iskandar upon matters of civil planning or the increased immigration of refugees into the city.

The nights were growing darker, so it seemed, and when the dawn came it bled across the horizon. In the hands of a young Telerin messenger, her sweeping hair braided within a net of serrated sharks-teeth and pearls, came the news that the Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn, along with their daughter and a goodly part of their retinue, were withdrawn to the realm of Lothlórien in the East, and many muttered at what such things might portend. Coolly Annatar had accepted the news, it pleased him if indeed it bothered him at all as he tinkered elbow deep within the bowels of a kiln, yet he heard unattractive rumours of Celebrimbor's rage whispered through the halls of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, and to them he subtly hearkened.

And now the elf lord came crawling back to him, crowned in such simpering repentance for his boldness in the stables those days before, and it was only with a conscious effort of will that Annatar suffered his presence. It was a necessary endurance, he told himself firmly, and upon his own terms the elf's company was not _so_ hateful, he supposed. Sooner or later, it would draw to an end.

"Come in," he called in response to the elf's quiet request, and as he heard Celebrimbor's footsteps pace through the outer rooms of his suite, he stretched himself upon the bedcovers where he languished. An antique book of Noldorin jewel-cutting designs was cracked open across his lap, a goblet of spiced wine he held curled elegantly between his fingers, and he quickly scanned the final few words upon the page before draining his goblet, and laying the book aside.

As Celebrimbor entered his bedchamber proper, Annatar stirred, with an almost painful reluctance he pulled himself up against his pillows into a slightly more formal sitting position.

"Don't…" Celebrimbor murmured; the word fell awkwardly from his lips to clot at his feet. "Don't trouble yourself…"

The elf lord wavered at the foot of the bed; his high-collared, regal attire was a poor mask for the discomfort that knotted through his shoulders. He stole a shameful glance at the Maia, at his _friend_, before sighing heavily, and for one delicious moment Annatar let him squirm in his unease. If Celebrimbor had come to grovel, he thought, then let him do it well.

For in the preceding minutes Annatar had thickened the glamour that swum about him, he wove his subtle illusions until they shrouded him like a mournful veil. A wounded, melancholy air he affected to himself, he clasped it before him like a shield, and with wary reproachfulness he looked to Celebrimbor.

"How… how can I help you, my lord?" he began timidly, and as Celebrimbor took a step forward, almost imperceptibly he shrank back into the pillows, he flinched away from that motion as a frightened animal cowers from its abuser. And at the wince that crossed the elf's face as he beheld that tiny, instinctive movement, a great slick of well-concealed glee spilled through Annatar's stomach.

Towards the left of the bed Celebrimbor moved, one hand trailing absently over one of its carven posts, while in the other was held a small cloth parcel. For a moment then the elf paused, he looked down at Annatar, and his youthful face seemed somehow haggard. Such a look of longing and injury twined together in his gaze, it was so abjectly pathetic that for a moment Annatar almost did pity him, in a condescending, remote sort of way.

"Perhaps you cannot help me, in the end," Celebrimbor sighed. He sank down to perch upon the edge of the covers, and morosely he looked down to the parcel now balanced in his lap. "I sense that you have only the power to wound."

"To wound, my lord?" Annatar murmured, and about him his glamour seemed to swirl, it curled and shimmered in all of its innocence and all of its treachery. "I -" Abashedly he bit his lip, he cleared this throat and sorrowfully he began anew. "That was never my intent, my lord. I did not mean to –"

"I am sorry, Annatar." The words tumbled from Celebrimbor's lips, raw and desperate and unstoppable; urgently the elf looked to him. "I am so sorry."

"My lord…"

Celebrimbor's fingers curled into trembling fists about the bed's quilt, his knuckles shone pale and bloodless through the skin of his hands. "I am sorry. For… for my actions, before. For my _impropriety_. I never… You, you make me…"

A painful quirk caught upon Celebrimbor's lips, he seemed to wrestle the slippery words out of his throat, and with fey, glittering eyes Annatar watched him suffer.

"I – I feel for you, Annatar. I do, and that I do not think that I can change. I feel… _deeply _for you, though – though I am not even sure _why_…"

Such misery sounded in the elf's voice, and for a moment Annatar simply rejoiced in it. But as Celebrimbor's anguished gaze slipped at last from him, Annatar then mellowed, and he murmured, "At times you fear that these feelings run _too_ deep, do you not? They cut too close to the bone."

A quavering sigh parted Celebrimbor's lips, tension locked across his broad shoulders, and his eyes came to a fluttering, cringing close as for a moment he sat in silence.

"Such passions," he spat at last; a sudden vehemence seemed to wreathe him, and the bitterness of his words left his nose crinkled as they scorched over his tongue. "Such passions, they – they are ugly things. They are wild. They are _destructive_. My father, he – he succumbed to them in the end, and I… I do not want that."

Something feral swam in Annatar's eyes, yet ruefully he smiled, he smoothed the triumphant blare of emotion within him into geniality as he looked upon the elf sitting dejectedly before him. Upon the bed then he shifted himself into a cross-legged position, he leaned forwards, and almost sympathetically he murmured, "You are not your father, my lord."

"Am I not?" Celebrimbor's voice was distant; his dark eyes were glazed with some clouded pall of remembrance, and of what foul memories troubled him Annatar did not care to ask. Celebrimbor's right hand slowly curled about the parcel in his lap; metal crunched from within it as his grip tightened, and as if that slight sound jolted him from his reverie then he sighed, and curiously Annatar watched him as he began to flick open the cloth wrappings.

"I made this," Celebrimbor said softly; the slight hint of a blush reddened the tips of his ears as he unveiled his handiwork, and a fizz of vindictive delight bubbled in Annatar's stomach at the sight of the elf's discomfort. "I made this for you. As… as an apology."

A necklace of intricately interlocked lames of silver he revealed, and at its richness even Annatar was taken aback. The spiralling, interwoven strands of its chain were set at their core with a dark ruby the size of a swan's egg, and the gemstone's facets were set sparkling in a thousand red hues as the soft sunlight and the few lit candles about Annatar's bedchamber illumined the depths and whorls within the great stone. It was a kingly gift, and yet Celebrimbor offered it freely; and Annatar stared in amazement at it for a few speechless moments more until quickly he turned.

He swept his honeyed cascade of hair aside to bare the back of his neck to Celebrimbor, almost coyly he glanced back over his shoulder, a cheeky shrug belying his invitation, and his acceptance of such a sumptuous apology. Yearning burned in Celebrimbor's heart as he gazed upon the curve of Annatar's neck: the slight stud and shift of vertebrae under his skin, the soft ridges of tendons that ran from the light collar of his shirt to the base of his skull, a stray ringlet of hair that slipped down the side of his throat. Desperately Celebrimbor stamped down the ferocious blaze of arousal that ignited within him; he restrained the screaming impulse to simply melt forwards, to take Annatar in his hands, to kiss him, to _possess_ him, and as the more sordid of his thoughts reared their heads, hurriedly he looked away.

Annatar did not want him, he told himself firmly. Let this simply be a gesture of friendship, he willed himself, a symbol of affection without lust, yet he was powerless to stop the aching tremble of his fingers as he lifted the necklace to Annatar's throat. The Maia dipped his head while Celebrimbor fumbled with the clasps, his fingers brushed over the warm, smooth skin of Annatar's neck and hard he swallowed back the moan of longing that coiled up in his throat. Quickly though the necklace was secured, Annatar swept his hair back over his shoulders, and with a tentative smile he turned back around.

"It is lovely," he sighed, glancing happily down at himself as he centred the ruby between the points of his clavicles, before sending such a radiant grin towards Celebrimbor that it nearly caved the elf's chest in with its brilliance.

Slowly Celebrimbor nodded; that stunning necklace curled about the Maia's neck did nothing but enhance his beauty, and gross, crude craving twisted in Celebrimbor's innards. But ferociously he pushed past such base desire, _Annatar did not want him_, and with a ruined, hurting smile he replied, "Yet it is still inadequate. It cannot do you justice."

"Perhaps I do not deserve your justice, my lord," Annatar murmured, and at that strange remark Celebrimbor looked more sharply to him.

But the Maia's gaze drifted away, dreamily he looked down to his hands folded upon his lap, and the flecks of crimson light that danced across them. For as he turned, the candlelight fell upon the great ruby at his throat, and it threw its ghostly refractions to scatter like a spray of evanescent blood upon Annatar's fingers.

"The light is shattered," he mused, more to himself than in any declaration of intent, watching in fascination as he twisted his hands about, as the wavering points of crimson light hovered upon his knuckles.

"It is beautiful," Celebrimbor smiled, glancing fondly down at those slender fingers.

"It is broken."

"Can it not be both?"

The light burst into a thousand pinpricks of radiance as Annatar looked upwards, crimson shards spun giddily out across the room to dissolve into the daylight as he shifted himself to sit more companionably by the elf, one bare foot dangling off the edge of the bed while his other leg lay curled before him.

A look of confusion at Celebrimbor's last comment crossed his brows; Annatar was so devastatingly beautiful, Celebrimbor thought, so unintentionally alluring and somehow that casualness only made it _worse_. Yet stoically he wrestled down the rich growl of desire in his voice as he continued, "Many beautiful things there were in this world, yet now they are broken, or they are lost, it is true. But that does not deny them their splendour."

"Nay," Annatar replied, a rueful curl plucking at his lips. "Then their purpose is made void. For what is beauty without presence, without… substance? It is rendered hollow. It is unmade."

"It could be made anew." Celebrimbor's voice strengthened, his heart lifted from the muddle of his thoughts, and pride glittered in his dark eyes as they wandered to Annatar's balcony and gazed upon the distant sunlight beyond. "There is light yet in this world that we might snare, we might distil it and spin it into works of our own wonders. The heirlooms of my house are lost, but even if they might not be salvaged then their glory we might seek to remake."

A carefully toneless noise of consideration flickered out of Annatar's throat. Hard he fought to stop himself from arcing a disparaging eyebrow, from outright scoffing, from laughing in the elf's face at the sheer enormity of his arrogance. Celebrimbor was talented in metallurgy and jewel crafting beyond the ordinary measure of his kind, that much was undeniable, but his words only thinly veiled the grandeur of his intent.

Yet something in Annatar's gaze sharpened at the thought, cunningly he tilted his head, he glanced to Celebrimbor as slyly he said, "That is an ambitious charge, my lord."

"The mighty Fëanáro is my father's sire," the elf preened, and with every ounce of his willpower Annatar restrained himself from rolling his eyes. "You would speak to me then of ambition?"

Annatar's lip curled, his eyes gleamed, and lightly, coyly, he said, "Not so, my lord. I would not _reprimand_ it, if that is what you imply. Merely I would suggest… nay…"

"What?"

Annatar reined in the surge of delight that rolled through him at the urgency in the elf's tone, and conversationally he continued, "The light of the Silmarilli was sacrosanct; it was blended of blessed things and now they are lost, they are placed now far beyond the reach of impious hands. Yet to my mind there comes a thought: it was not merely light that Fëanáro embroiled within those jewels. There was light, and there was all that the light possessed: purity, radiance, divinity. But there was also _power_."

Celebrimbor frowned, his eyes narrowed as he bade the Maia continue.

"If power could be sewn within a material, if the raw tendrils of puissance could be coaxed and channelled and harnessed and within a vessel therein stored, then what realms of possibility might then be opened to us? Alike to the Silmarilli a thing could be made, but where Fëanáro's jewels were static, this thing could be fluid. If it was not locked, not so rigidly bound, then it could be used to a purpose, it could be replenished and drained in strength without breaking its integrity. If such a thing were to be made, what power then could the bearer wield at their leisure? It would be a marvel, Tyelpë, a thing unmatched in glory and wonder, and its maker would be hailed in utmost renown even unto the end of days."

Intrigue swirled within Celebrimbor's mind; all that Annatar said was entrancing, was new and foreign and exciting, yet some small note of caution sparked within him at the Maia's words.

"Such power you speak of, Annatar," he said carefully. "This… this raw puissance, so you say, this is the dominion of the Valar, not of my people…"

"Power resides within those capable of wielding it." Annatar's voice was soft, delicate; it was laced with poison. "Not fickle deities who turn their backs from this world."

Eagerly Annatar leaned forward, with a roguishly conspiratorial air to his manner he lifted his head, and led by an impulse that he refused to give name to Celebrimbor found himself clinging tightly to Annatar's words.

"There are other powers in this world, Tyelpë," the Maia purred, his voice low and soft and perilous. "There are things that were birthed in the Elder Days: dissonant notes of the great Music in the Beginning that wished to play their own tune, that have grown feral. They are wild, perhaps, but they too have power, and strength to challenge even the Valar should they give thought to do so. Blind things gnaw the foundations of the earth; leviathans prowl the deeps where Ulmo's fair folk dare not to swim. Dark, they are called, malevolent, yet on what authority? Their puissance is different to the tranquillity of the Valar, but does that inherently make it evil? It matters not; perhaps, the consequence only is that the power exists in things such as these. And there are some greater still, beings of such majesty and grace that the Eldar would only prostrate themselves before him in their squalid obeisance…"

A long silence flowed through the room, the sunlight seemed to flicker and dim from beyond the wispy curtains, and the burning wicks of the candles grew long and bright as Annatar's words washed over them. Celebrimbor blinked almost drunkenly as the Maia's voice wove its beguiling net about him, his head near lolled as his imagination swelled and waxed with the rhythm of Annatar's words: beasts of ivory and horn and blood bowed naked and terrible before him, ashen hands and iron crowned him, spears dripped in gore at his sides; revelry, chaos, it was all held within his palm; it infused him, it glutted him with such power that he could cleave the earth asunder, he could sup all red and bloodied and ruined upon its spilling entrails…

"These things," he slurred: it was so hard to focus, to push aside those lilting, reeling images that beckoned to him, that welcomed him in all of their perversions and all of their temptation. "These things that you speak of… how – how came you by such thoughts?

A cruel smile hinted at the corners of Annatar's lips, the words dripped from his teeth in a rolling, measured cadence. "In slothful gardens many a flower like thee, the amorous gods are used, honey-sweet to kiss and cast then bruised, their fragrance loosing, under feet."

"You recite to me poetries?"

"I recite to you truths, my lord," Annatar purred, yet a faint humour moved him. "Albeit in poetic form, I grant. A noble composition, penned by the greatest loremaster of our time. For when the body is abandoned to idle luxury, the mind may yet wander. It may turn to treasures, or to knowledge, or to secrets. Or to creations."

"What then would you create?" Celebrimbor asked. The words flowed greedily from his lips. "What might_ I_ create? This… this thing of power. Into what form could I shape it?"

A ponderous moment of silence hung in the air, it became almost hungry, until at last Annatar shrugged, tilting himself away from Celebrimbor and lazily reaching for his book once more.

"I know not, my lord," he said lightly, yet an indulgent smile played about his lips as the capricious potentials and cruel temptations of fancy curled through him. "It is only whimsy, after all."

* * *

><p>The weeks rolled steadily onwards, and despite the ever-present thrum and prickle of unspoken tension that lingered in the air, both Annatar and Celebrimbor for the most part took comfort in their renewed friendship. They worked companionably upon ongoing projects commissioned to the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, from the forging of new ceremonial blades to assisting with the re-armaments and fortifications of Ost-in-Edhil's main gates.<p>

For from the roads without, brought to the city upon the lips of frightened travellers or battle-hardened dwarves with grim iron in their hands, came foreboding omens of an oncoming darkness. Fell things stalked the moors at night, the dwarves muttered, and even the short road from the Elven city to the West Gate of Moria was growing unsafe. Screams were heard in the mountains, torn from unseen throats, cries and garbled ululations echoed amid the shale as the moon rose above the horizon. At every inconsequential rock-fall, or the light scrabble of some small foraging creature, the guards' stout weapons were drawn, and in the darkness there rebounded unearthly cries amid the fractured landscape. Travellers up the Great Road from the south were snatched by unseen hands should they stray far from their campfires, children and grown men alike were stolen into the shadows with nothing but screams and sodden, red furrows in the earth to mark their passing.

The fells were become perilous, ravens wheeled and cawed overhead, and despite the heavily armed parties of guards that Celebrimbor sent by day to make safe the lands, they turned up little evidence of misdeeds for their labours. A scuffed track of unrecognisable footprints one party found imprinted into the mud of a narrow, reeking gully to the south-west of the city; they followed its trail to a small dam made of chewed bones and clumped knots of hair, yet the perpetrator of such a grotesque massacre had long since departed.

Smears of blood daubed the walls of a cave far to the south-east, nearer unto the dwellings of the men of the Crossing than to Ost-in-Edhil, yet still the guards investigated. Their horses whickered and shied as they urged them nearer to the cave's darkened mouth, and upon their tentative entry they found only scrawls of gore plastered over the walls like some obscene mural. Half-intelligible sigils were scratched into the soft limestone; cruor dripped from stalactites sharpened like wicked staves, and such a foul stench lingered upon the air that before long the guards were forced to depart. With haste they traversed the long road back to Ost-in-Edhil, yet for their vigilance and skill among the wilds, they caught no sight of the creatures that howled their hatred to the night's starry skies, and stealthily continued to slake the lands in blood.

Ost-in-Edhil itself remained free of such perils: Celebrimbor's stalwart rule ensured that his citizens slept safely behind their high walls and keen-eyed guards, though slowly, unstoppably, the pollution of these unseen terrors encroached upon his lands. Yet no creatures dared the might of the city, not yet, save one, and he wove his concealments cunningly.

Daily Annatar would walk with Celebrimbor, Corannon, and a score of other engineers and artificers of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, and he would aid in consultation of how best to barricade their gates in an emergency, where best to construct secondary fortifications should the need, however doubtful, arise. The courtesans were apt to waive their suspicions, they viewed such troublesome reports as exaggerations or mere mishaps upon their roads and hardly the prelude to war, yet as the weeks dragged on and the numbers of such incidences did not dwindle, even the most frivolous of lords began to pay greater attention to their city's affairs.

Into the stones then the elves poured their strength, into the mortar that bound them they let flow the true power of their smithcraft and their magic, and ever Annatar aided them, or so he appeared to. With subtle little spells of his own he corrupted their wards, he blighted their safeguards, he weaved his own will among the stones and timbers with but a dusting kiss of power and he bade them stand strong, he bade them hearken to the elves but ultimately bound their subservience to himself. He smiled as he felt the hidden splinters of his own puissance pulse back at him as he laid a caressing hand upon the outer walls, his power dormant and yet readied.

With Ennemirë, Commander of the City Guard he would talk upon occasion. Though he protested his innocence in matters of war, he would advise upon where seemed best to him to post additional soldiery as lookouts, or upon what ramparts new catapults might best be mounted, and ever to Ennemirë's ears his advice seemed uncannily accurate. Still, she supposed, Maiarin folk were not apt to mistakes, and such was the subtle authority with which Annatar spoke, and such was the utmost trust with which her lord regarded him, that any doubts about him that she held were soon assuaged.

In the midst of such militaristic industries still Annatar kept himself busy within the more minor projects of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain's halls. Upon a month-long commission from Ost-in-Edhil's trade council he laboured upon introducing the art of silver plating to the elves; the gilding of base metals with a thin veneer of silver which might then be traded at an increased cost.

A small beaker set with a rudimentary circuit of charged metals he had left to steep within a solution of silver chloride, and in the dim morning light of Celebrimbor's workroom the elf lord peered at it curiously.

"Well," he said, eyeing the beaker admiringly. "It has certainly worked!"

"Indeed," Annatar replied, busying himself with lighting a small gas burner upon one of the workbenches with a slight flicker of puissance, for lack of a match to hand. "I said that it would, did I not?"

He crossed the room to retrieve a basket laden with myriad jars filled with metal chunks suspended in oil, and he glanced curiously to Celebrimbor, who was still staring in rapt wonder at the beaker. "It is quite simple, really," Annatar drawled. "The silver in the solution is inherently positively charged, and is therefore attracted to the negative cathode, and oppositely the chloride is attracted to the anode. It is little more than magnetism."

"But you… you catalysed this reaction, didn't you?" Celebrimbor frowned, yet eagerly he peered at the wafer-thin flakes of pure silver that clung to the cathode. "Else from where does the energy transfer occur?"

"There is no catalyst," Annatar explained, laying out the jars beside the gas burner and rummaging about in a nearby drawer for a small pair of tongs. "No catalyst save for a small spark of power. The particles of the reaction must be coaxed into motion, and the goad must come from somewhere. Easily you could replicate this, if you concentrated even a small portion of your _fëa's _strength onto it. I could teach you, if you so desired."

"Later," Celebrimbor nodded, wandering from the workbench to sit heavily behind his desk, and morosely he stared at the voluminous pile of paperwork that lay stacked upon it. "Still, it is a wonder…"

Annatar did not deign to give a reply. It was really rather mundane, he thought. Far greater works than this trivial little beaker had he seen begun in the days of old: he had called down the lightning and channelled it into electroplating upon such a scale that had seen their dark fortress swelled with riches, great swathes of dull metal they plated in gleaming chromium or dusky copper to be traded or sold or shaped as they willed. It was pitiful how little even the foremost of the Noldorin smiths truly knew of industry.

Still, Annatar mused, there was a smug sort of satisfaction in their ignorance.

With a small notebook and quill left at the ready, Annatar unscrewed one of the jars before him, grasping a small slice of silver-ish metal with the tongs before plunging it into the flame of the burner. For a moment he waited, until swiftly the flare beneath him transmuted to a vivid lilac in colour. Casting aside the smoking metal to a sterile length of cloth beside him he recorded his observations before turning to the next jar. He worked methodically through the samples, noting as the flame was turned yellow, viridian, and phosphorescent orange with the differing metals, and he made careful notes upon their hue.

At arms length he held his last piece of metal: it hissed and spat as the oil about it ignited, yet it imparted no new colour to the flame. With a click of his fingers he extinguished both the gas burner and the shard of metal, leaving it gently steaming alongside the other scraps as he turned aside.

"Have you any lithium?" he enquired, squinting at the jars that clustered along Celebrimbor's shelves, and finding none apparent.

"In the store, I think," Celebrimbor replied distractedly, his gaze flicking up for an instant before he hastily scribbled out several lines of writing upon the end of a lengthy-looking document. Once finished, he cast a fine drying sand across the parchment, and with a sigh he laid his quill aside. "Some was mined a few years back, as I recall it. A seam of petalite was hit within the granite mines to the north, or perhaps we traded with the Hadhodrim for it… Some certainly we acquired, though I do not know how much of it was purified to its elemental form. We do not commonly use it. What purpose do _you_ need it for?"

"I wish to observe its flame colour, that is all. The other metals here are akin to it, save the aberrant, yet there is no lithium among them. It matters not if it is mineralised: I can distil a small amount for my purposes."

Celebrimbor's eyes narrowed in puzzlement for a brief moment, to his recollection the purification of lithium was anything but simple, but softly then he shook his head, and he pushed himself to his feet.

"Come, walk with me," he bade Annatar, "for I too have things that I must collect."

Together they traversed the halls of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, and companionably they chatted as they strolled through the expansive corridors. Nobles nodded politely as they passed; Corannon hailed them enthusiastically through the ajar door of his workroom, the hem of his sleeve perilously close to being singed by the hydrogen flare that seethed above a bubbling vial of aluminium shards soaking in lye, and at that Annatar stifled a contemplative smirk. They clove through a knot of apprentices grumbling about the repetitive acid-base titrations that Narvi had set them to do, they skirted a rather dejected-looking elf who was sporting some magnificent scorches across his flame-proof leathers, and at last Annatar found himself trailing Celebrimbor down the stairs to the cellars that housed the grand store-room.

The narrow stairwell opened out into a colossal chamber; countless rows of filled racks stretched on into the gloom, and Annatar squinted off into the store's inky depths as beside him Celebrimbor lit a slender lantern and handed it to him. He indicated a row of shelves to Annatar's far right, saying, "Lithium, or petalite at the least, should be upon the topmost one, about three-quarters of the way down the row, if memory serves correctly. I shall meet you back in my workroom, when you are readied. Take what time you need."

"My thanks," Annatar intoned, and he and Celebrimbor parted towards opposite ends of the store. Dusty jars and cobweb-strewn boxes cluttered over the shelves, more so as Annatar proceeded into the store's depths. Great swipes were clawed through the film of grime where items had been recently collected, but otherwise the shelves remained undisturbed, and for how long so Annatar could only guess.

Easily enough he found a chest containing large chunks of glassy petalite, and this he pulled from the shelf and placed at the ready upon the floor. He poked through a few nearby vials, but finding little there of interest he swung aside, the lantern held aloft in his hand. Yet upon the opposite shelf an antique label caught his eye; in a spidery hand half-faded with the passing of time was scrawled 'warning: toxic', and upon closer inspection Annatar could just glimpse the fine arsenic powder through the discoloured glass jar.

A sadistic curl of interest needled him then, and further down the row of shelves he wandered, and that interest sharpened into a vindictive sneer of glee at the treasures he found there. Immense jars of hydrochloric acid were stacked over a huge swathe of shelving, all neatly prescribed according to their concentrations, and fondly his fingers trailed over their capped lids. The screams still rang in his ears: even now, even with the turn of millennia and the countless tortures that he had been privy to, that one still amused him the most.

So deliciously the elf had writhed in his bonds as the searing acid bit into his skin, so thinly he had shrieked as they submerged him in it; he had come up coughing blood and sizzling phlegm as the sensitive tissues of his trachea and lungs were eroded. It had snorted from his nose, it had bubbled all pink and frothy upon his lips as he spluttered, as he jerked, as his eyeballs corroded and melted down his face in two thick, chunky drools of viscera. It was almost beautiful, in a way; they dribbled down his cheeks almost like vitreous tears.

How pliant the elf's flesh had been, Annatar recalled, how sticky, how easily it had peeled away from the bone. How wet the elf's last breaths had sounded, how drowned in despair and pain. He wondered what Celebrimbor now would sound like, gulping like that, his breath coming in soft, erratic clicks through a half-dissolved throat. Would he try to beg, Annatar mused. Even at the end of everything, when words became meaningless moans and coughs and gurgles of agony, would he still try to plead for mercy? Truly Annatar was unsure: Celebrimbor was no craven, of that he was sure, but oh how the possibility of experimentation lapped its tempting little urges through him.

A surge of vicious pleasure hummed in Annatar's stomach as he turned aside, as he wandered yet deeper into the bowels of the store, untouched for years if the thickness of the dust was to judge by. Such wondrous labels leapt at him: slender vials of ethylene were stored opposite jars of cherry-red dichloride of sulphur, and the very thought of their combination made his eyes smart. For all too keenly he remembered that particular trial: even thickly layered in greased, protective leathers as he had been, it had taken weeks for the blisters to recede.

Vesicants clustered next to corrosives; rummaging to the back of a shelf Annatar fished from its depths a tightly sealed jar of a singularly vicious compound of methylated chlorine, and his heart soared at the discovery. It would not be so complex, he thought: a simple catalyst of any generic amine with a solution of hydrofluoric acid to create an intermediary, a sharp spark of puissance and a solvolysis reaction with isopropyl alcohol, and then what glorious terror might he unleash. A silent holocaust he could bring to the bleached walls of Ost-in-Edhil, he could crown himself king of a city of their twitching, suffocated corpses.

The temptation of it gnawed at him, but for now he batted it aside. With a vindictive smirk curled over his lips he turned about, noting the location of the chemicals before backtracking to his box of pelatite, and retreating upstairs to Celebrimbor's workroom with only a solemn billow of dust to mark his passage through the cellars.

With a few minor refinements, his flame experiments were carried out well, and soon enough he returned to aid Celebrimbor in his personal projects once more. Phosphorescent trails of turgid, molten metal he let flow into the crucibles that Celebrimbor held; he taught the elf new methods of tempering steel, of variations to the temperatures or the quenching agents utilised that might strengthen the steel dual-fold.

Hot and sweaty then one afternoon they emerged from the great furnaces, already ripping off their thick leather gloves and face masks as they walked back to Celebrimbor's workroom. Once inside they stripped in earnest, peeling the heavy leather aprons from their damp jerkins, and Annatar stepped aside his pile of clothing to unbind his hair from its braid, running his fingers through its locks and grimacing as they came away coated in grime. Hurriedly then he yanked off his steel-capped boots and thick socks, and tugged off the heat-resistant jerkin that clung to him, wriggling it off of his shoulders and leaving him clad only in his sweat-stained shirt and breeches.

His back was turned to Celebrimbor, who was occupied with stripping off his gear alike, but as he twisted to straighten out the rumples of his shirt, he could feel the fabric stick uncomfortably high up his spine, and from behind him he heard the elf suddenly gasp.

"Annatar," Celebrimbor said, his eyes bright with concern as quickly he stepped forward. "Annatar, your… your _back_…"

Knotted white scars groped over the Maia's spine, some curled even to the edges of his ribs, thin and wiry and cutting and so long concealed from prying eyes by the safety of fabric, and Annatar froze as Celebrimbor stepped yet nearer. His left arm moved to clamp protectively against his bared side, he began to tug down the traitorous material that left him so exposed, and quietly he said, "It is nothing, my lord."

"Nothing?" Aghast, Celebrimbor reached forward; he cared not for propriety as tenderly he reached for his friend's shirt, as he shifted it gently upwards, and almost numbly Annatar let him. A vicious clutch of horror squeezed about his windpipe as he saw the true extent of the scarring, of the ugly whip-lines that marred the Maia's muscled back, that ridged over his skin.

"How can you say this is nothing?" he whispered, his eyes shining with dismay. "For… for Eru's sake, Annatar, you look like you have been flayed half to death!"

"It is just a memory…" The Maia's voice was bleached, dead; he looked emotionlessly to the rough wood of the workbench at his side as the memories flitted through him. Before the court he was splayed, his master sent the whip shrieking across his back and smiled as he did it, he had carved those shameful marks through his skin and had made them indelible, and for all of the power intuitive to him never could he lift the cruel marks of his master's punishment, of his _ownership_ from his skin.

And as Annatar stood so vulnerably before him, all at once an inexplicable sense of guilt cramped through Celebrimbor's innards; a feeling of responsibility, of _protectiveness_, and his fingers brushed tentatively, sorrowfully over the gnarled edge of a scar upon Annatar's waist. As Annatar began to pull away, Celebrimbor stopped him; his hand clamped about the Maia's wrist and held him close.

"Annatar," he said gravely, passionately: he could not fathom from what well of emotion his words sprang, he knew only that he ached as he said them. "Annatar, did somebody hurt you? Did somebody do this… to you? _Why_? I – I do not understand…"

A long pause curdled the air between them, yet determinedly Celebrimbor's fingers clutched about Annatar's wrist. They left reddened marks upon his skin.

Softly then Annatar sighed, the glamour about him seemed to dim, and melancholy stabbed suddenly through Celebrimbor's heart.

"My past was… complicated," the Maia said slowly. Carefully he chose his words, he compelled himself not to lie but only to twist the truth to his own purposes, for misplaced sentiment here could yet prove his undoing. But swiftly he glimpsed the path to his salvation, and into his words he wove a slight undercurrent of sorcery, and with feigned, stumbling innocence he continued. "I was not always… I have made many mistakes, my lord, and my previous master did not always look upon them with kindness."

"But this…" the elf spluttered, "Annatar, this is _appalling_…"

"Not all have such tender hearts." A shy smile pricked at the corner of Annatar's lips, a faint blush mottled his pale cheeks, and hard he fought to keep his veneer of coyness in place as a flare of naked lust bolted through the elf's eyes. "Not all have regarded me with such grace. Not like you do, Tyelpë. For you are very kind to me here."

He felt the elf's grip upon him shift; shakily, nervously perhaps, Celebrimbor's fingers slipped down his wrist, across his palm. "I could be yet kinder."

Celebrimbor's fingers gently nudged Annatar's apart, they slipped in between them, and Annatar swallowed back the whimper of abhorrence that threatened to slip from his throat; he transmuted it into a strangled noise that might have passed for shyness.

"I could be so kind to you," Celebrimbor crooned, subtly he rocked his hips into Annatar's body, "if you would only let me."

His fingernail clipped over a thin golden ring that Annatar wore across his forefinger, and the slight jar of the metal seemed to slam up the Maia's arm. For like some unholy firework burst inside of his skull an idea erupted within him; his eyes flew open as it suffused him, even as the elf pressed into him a wild, reckless smile creased over his face.

_Ash nazg…_

So powerful was the thought that it need not have been spoken, so foul were the syllables that instinctively Celebrimbor jerked backwards, his hand springing free from Annatar's wrist as if somehow that touch had become scalding. A strange pressure thudded at Celebrimbor's temples, his tongue felt as though it were coated in grit, yet he blinked to Annatar in confusion. For nothing had happened, the Maia had not moved save for the incredulous expression unfurling over his handsome face, and yet still something felt wrong, the air seemed suddenly dangerous and fey.

"Annatar?" Celebrimbor began slowly; the Maia's name seemed to buzz and scratch through the sluggish scramble of his thoughts in an entirely unpleasant sensation.

Yet animatedly Annatar turned to him, a bold smile curved over his lips, and such an air of ecstasy seemed to wreathe him that Celebrimbor found himself tentatively grinning back as the Maia hissed, "A ring!"

"What?"

_Ash nazg durbatulûk - _

"Rings, my lord!" the Maia exclaimed, his golden eyes imploring and excited and oh so beautiful even as he whirled upon his heel, as he shoved his shirt back into his breeches and scraped his hair back into a ponytail.

"I have to go," he said abruptly, flinging on a pair of boots with such uncharacteristic abandon that Celebrimbor simply stared at him in surprise. "To the library. Yes… yes, they should be there. Excuse me, my lord. I – This will be the making of us all!"

Annatar almost sprinted from the room in his haste, and Celebrimbor stared in utter confusion after him. After a long while of puzzled stillness then he shook his head as if to clear it, he strode over to his desk and took up his quill pen, and desperately he tried to ignore the ugly flush of churning, thwarted, _desperate_ arousal that Annatar had left squirming in his innards.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for all of your patience, and I apologise that this update was a little slower than usual. But still, I hope it was worth the wait! Until next time, theeventualwinner xx<em>


	5. Avaritia

AVARITIA

The clouds unravelled their entrails across the skies, and beneath their grey pall Annatar meandered through the austere streets of Ost-in-Edhil's upper circle. The marble facades of the courtesan's district reared up about him; elegantly sculpted archways bridged buildings lacquered in pearlescent stone, and shady arbours nestled like verdant islands between their pale walls. Through them Annatar wandered contemplatively, he paused for a time under the branches of a weeping willow to admire an elaborately plumed fountain, a tribute to cold Uinen and her wilful husband.

He fiddled with the fine pack slung across his shoulders as he leaned against the willow's smooth trunk, he picked free a stray thread from his coat and strung a few idle braids through the foremost strands of his unbound hair, until with a scowl he tugged them free. For loath though he was to admit it to himself, here he was skulking in the streets like a petulant child. Yet still, he pondered balefully, idleness was perhaps better than the claustrophobia that Celebrimbor's house had impressed upon him of late.

Of late he spent the majority of his time beneath the domed roof of Ost-in-Edhil's great library, and he paid only fleeting visits to the Gwaith-i-Mírdain's halls when most ardently his presence was requested. Through the library's countless scrolls and tomes of ancient lore he trawled, he hunted, from creaking leather-bound tomes unopened for centuries he scribbled down notes upon his own fresh parchments, from crumbling manuscripts he divined what of the original text still remained legible. With the passing of time, slowly he began to assemble what knowledge he required.

For though it seemed only a chime of fancy, that flash of inspiration in Celebrimbor's workroom those long weeks before had ignited a zealous flame of passion within him. If power could be sewn within a vessel, a metal, a _ring_; if it could be corralled there and contained, trapped and yet still allowed fluidity, then what wonders might he be able to create? If into a ring he could pour himself, the crushed, concentrated malice of his spirit put into a thing of metal there to dwell, twice over he could augment himself, or more even, and what boundless power would then be at his fingertips?

What being in these forsaken lands would ever dare to stand against him?

So fervently he searched; for books brought out of Valinor in the prime of the Noldor's wisdom, for scrolls upon arcane techniques of metallurgy long thought mere fragments of memory. Fëanáro's own scriptures were lost; squandered with his bickering sons or swallowed up into their ruinous wars, and the secrets of the Silmarilli he bore with him to his ashen demise. Bitterly Annatar grudged him his stubbornness, those secrets could have proved useful, should he ever have had opportunity to pry them forth. But no matter, in the end, for Annatar did not seek to create some fawning reproduction of the Three. He strove to create something far more precious than simple jewels.

After days of meagre scavenging, at last his efforts were rewarded. Deep within the cobwebbed bowels of the archives he at last unearthed a small, scuffed chest, he had severed through its aged padlock with a sharp word of power, and well he was contented with its spoils. For within the chest papers were scattered haphazardly, decayed with the turning of millennia and yet still legible; essays written by the venerable household of Mahtan, literature upon antique, puissant thaumaturgy, crushed scrolls written even in the academic shorthand of the House of Aulë, and how that discovery thrilled him. Still there was much to be deduced by his own hand and mind, but aided by such ancient lore it came more easily to him, and he relished the challenge of it.

This was to be his triumph, more than any sly mechanism of war that he set tipping into motion; _this_ was to be his masterpiece, stolen from the Eldar's lore and made corrupt in his service. A fitting diversion, he thought it, and it kept him mercifully free of Celebrimbor's clutches for a time.

For as the weeks had turned, the elf's hold upon him had tightened like a noose about his neck. Scarcely could he pry himself from Celebrimbor's side without some snide remark, without some jealous barb, and though at first it had been abstractly flattering, as the days passed without relent it grated upon his patience. Ever their conversations began to fill with caprice, with suspicions; Celebrimbor would pry into even the smallest facets of Annatar's work with a doggedness that was exasperating. Well Annatar eluded him, beguiled him, turned his suspicions back around upon himself or dashed them aside altogether, yet such constant bickering grew tiresome, and their company turned towards more the parries and feints of swordplay rather than easy camaraderie.

At least, Annatar thought as he roused himself from the tree's shade, as he continued his dawdling walk back to Celebrimbor's house, his excursions to the library removed him from the elf's stranglehold, and that lightened his heart by no small measure. It made the genial façade that we wore somehow easier to maintain no matter how much it itched at him, no matter how greatly he longed to throw it off, to assume himself again in wrath and pride and power, to take this whining, greedy elf lord and to give him a true injury to bemoan. Nay, excursions out into the city prevented such… _untimely_ actions. His pieces were cast into motion, but the board was not yet fully assembled, and until then he would simply endure the elf's tedium.

It would all come to such succulent fruition in the end.

Turning onto the main thoroughfare, Annatar's lips pursed as a deep trumpet blared suddenly behind him, and he stepped smartly to the side as the clatter of hooves swelled in his ears. He continued walking, yet furtively he appraised the mounted company that swept up the road past him. The turquoise and white banner of the Foamriders snapped crisply above them, their horses' flanks were frothed white with sweat, yet onwards still they spurred them. Spears of whalebone were held loosely in the guards' hands, darts of fluted baleen they carried at their belts, and helms fashioned after great sea-shells they wore. Rare it was for the Teleri to take up arms, but now necessity forced their hands, for even upon the gentle road from the Falathrim's shores the darkness had broken.

Messengers were now sent accompanied by armed retinues across Eregion and the North. From the new-founded Tharbad at the Crossing of the Gwathló, the parties of Men who paddled their barges upriver to ply their wares came with grim swords in their hands, and stories of blood upon the waters. Along the grand North-South Road, down the Green Way from the north-west came ill tidings, of fell creatures and black deeds, and news of them was received coldly within Ost-in-Edhil's walls. As yet the city remained untouched, though terrors scourged the mountains about them, none yet had breached the walls save one cunning Maia, and like a maggot chews through living flesh, he had burrowed himself in deeply.

And as he sauntered up the road back to Celebrimbor's house, Annatar wondered at what fell news the Foamriders brought from their lord, and under the grey churn of the skies, he smirked.

* * *

><p>The weeks passed in gloomy monotony, yet ever about the city a strange pressure seemed to throb in the air, and the troubles of the lands stoked inexorably to their distant crux. The clouds loured from the dirty skies, their grey, swollen bellies seemed almost to scrape the topmost turrets of the Council's roof, and within the meeting chamber Celebrimbor sat grimly upon his grand chair. The crystals picked into its high back no longer shone out their radiance, they sat dully within the wood atop the crossed hammers and silver stars, and from where he leaned against the chair's back Annatar stifled a rill of pleasure at their pallor.<p>

Framed within the _mithril_-wrought star set into the floor before them, the chief of Celebrimbor's gardeners stood gravely awaiting her lord's attention. The bloodied corpse of a hawk she held sorrowfully in her gloved hands, and worriedly she glanced at it before averting her gaze. The creature's feathers were matted with gore, its belly split and oozing viscera even as its glassy eyes stared sightlessly up to the stained glass windows.

Even the sunlight seemed polluted of late, Celebrimbor thought dourly. It threw only a faint haze of colour across the marble.

"My lord," the gardener prompted softly, she bowed her head reverently before him. From his drear silence Celebrimbor was at last drawn, and Annatar looked impassively down from his languid poise beside him.

"Tell me how it happened," Celebrimbor sighed, passing a weary hand over his haggard face. Too often now were evil tidings brought before him, they swirled and moiled like a brooding pall about his heart, and with each new occurrence they seemed to crush inwards upon it like some dismaying vice.

Yet even through the bleak wander of his thoughts, he was so acutely, so instinctively conscious of the lazy tilt of Annatar's hips beside him, of the curve of his thigh within his fitted breeches not inches from his fingers. And how greatly he wished to reach out to him, touch him, hold him; even in the most inappropriate of situations the Maia's presence scored a deep furrow of hot, thwarted arousal through his innards.

It was stupid, he knew, it was sick; this insidious, infectious attraction ever left him vulnerable, left him distracted, and inwardly he cursed himself for it. He was better than this, his people deserved better than this, yet he was helpless to resist the hooks that seemed to tear through his heart, that leashed him to the Maia no matter how much he might thrash against them. But Annatar _did not want him_, he reminded himself savagely, and perhaps that made it all the worse, all the more gutting.

It took a conscious effort of will for him to wrench his thoughts away from the maddening part of Annatar's thighs as the Maia shifted once more at his side.

Annoyance flared in his stomach as the _nis_ before him still hesitated, and perhaps more forcefully than he truly intended to, he snapped, "Speak, Telemmairë."

"The hawk was attacked, my lord," Telemmairë said softly, and her fingers curled tenderly about the mutilated little body in her hands. "I saw it upon the eastern horizon, from Lórien I thought it must have come. It soared towards the Hawkmaster's tower, yet as it crossed the boundary of the city walls suddenly it was besieged. A flock of ravens – "

"A murder," Annatar purred into Celebrimbor's ear, and a gluttonous note of delight rolled through his voice. It send a shiver up Celebrimbor's spine which was only partially to do with the Maia's hot breath upon his cheek. "A _murder_ of ravens, my lord."

" – like a black swarm they arose from the rooftops, they mobbed the poor creature, they tore it apart even as it struggled to break free of their tumult. At last it fell, broken and bleeding amid the far bushes of the garden, but it could not be saved. The message was lost, my lord, taken I fear by those foul carrion birds… "

"Thank you, Telemmairë," Celebrimbor sighed, and curtly he dismissed her with the standing order to shoot down any vile raven that came within bowshot. Solemnly she nodded, she withdrew a small length of cloth from her pocket and respectfully veiled the hawk that she carried, and quickly departed from the hall.

Behind her Celebrimbor placed his head slowly in his hands, despondently he sighed, and through his slitted fingers he stared bleakly out upon the cold, empty marble. All too often now such reports came to him, these crimes committed by an invisible hand were becoming more common by the day, and they weighed heavily upon his conscience.

And from where he leaned against the high chair, above the elf lord slumped below him, the orchestrator of such petty mischief smirked.

By the shadows of night Annatar would whisper his malice into the earth. Even as his master had done so when Arda was but fledgling in youth, he poured forth the blackness of his will and to him the tortured soil hearkened. For within his incantations, through splattered blood and cimmerian thaumaturgy, he sought out the wells of power that his master had pocked throughout the lands. These reserves, little splinters of hatred and envy long entombed in the soil, in the rocks, in the thick muds and choked effluvia of the marshes he found, and with them he blended the malevolence of his own will. He inflated them, he coaxed them forth, he bent them to his will and he bade them devour.

With the turning of the months he saw his furtive labours bear their fruitions. An unknown blight crippled the Noldor's fields of wheat and grain; furred, tuberous growths sprouted like some hideous cancer upon bud and stem alike, and slowly the flaxen meadows grew sickly and stunted. Fruit rotted upon the branch as their orchards withered, even the birds would not peck at their stinking remains that dashed in a messy slop to the ground, and any mortal or Quendi who dared partake of the spoiled goods were stricken grievously ill. Frantic messages began to flash across the North-west of the lands; Gil-galad sent riders galloping to Mithlond, to Tharbad, even to Oropher in the Greenwood and the Hadhodrim of Erebor with requests for aid, but those few who returned came with empty, despairing hands.

As the weeks rolled on, truly such frustrations began to bite, and the threat of a famine glowered upon the horizon. Celebrimbor desperately drew up plans with the Council as to allocation and rationing of what crops and livestock yet remained hale, yet even those efforts were not easy. Annatar gave what facetious advice he thought necessary, but ever he remained aloof and oddly impassive to such proceedings, and at the change in him some openly wondered. Gilthariel scarcely deigned to look him in the eye if ever they conversed, her scarred face she turned from him, and Iskandar visibly squirmed with abhorrence if they were left in close proximity for any length of time. But for the love of their lord they endured Annatar's company, and for the sake of his enterprise Annatar endured theirs, though the air ever grew brittle between them.

Celebrimbor meanwhile was not left entirely blind to the subtle change in his Maia. Too easily did Annatar seem to smile of late, a supercilious grin would roll over his lips at the report of another distant massacre, his eyes seemed to glitter with a fey, conniving light as a stout party of Gonnhirrim told of the sludge that now clotted the Sirannon; its turgid waters now frothed with a foul-smelling scum like pus seeping from a wound.

Even unto the distant shores of Harlindon, or the wilds of Rhovanion, with increasing frequency animals were birthed stillborn, or some terrible corruption pregnancy whelped only frail monsters. Beasts tottered on mangled limbs to collapse small hours later, their breathing laboured through fluid-filled lungs. Not three days before in a vale only five leagues north of Ost-in-Edhil amid the rolling hills of Cardolan, an Edain farmer had pulled free of his slain heifer its deformed babe, its fur matted and clumped in a reeking wash of blood and spoiled embryonic fluid, its face atrophied and its limbs scarcely a tangle of gristle about a misshapen thorax.

Something fickle seemed to glint beneath Annatar's gentle radiance; it sharpened him, it spilled through him like the slightest drop of blood swirled through smoothest cream. Yet in Celebrimbor's eyes it did not diminish him, it lent him a daring edge and it burrowed those hooks of desire just a little bit deeper into his heart. For still to him Annatar was charming, affable and suave in what fleeting moments of attention Celebrimbor could snatch from him. That frustrated scramble for affection blinded him to what he did not wish to see, and half wilfully he let it, though every one of Annatar's subtle rebukes sent a hot clutch of jealousy gnawing through him.

"Where do you go, Annatar?" Celebrimbor murmured one rare day when they both laboured within his workroom. He lifted his head from his papers and stared at the Maia with piercing intent. "Of late you flee from my side, you hide yourself from me… Where do you go?"

"I have told you before, my lord," Annatar replied disinterestedly, he scarcely glanced up from where he was hunched over his own writings, over the tangle of unbalanced chemical equations and physical theorems that spread before him. "I pursue this project: of the imbuing of power into an object. My studies take me abroad of this house."

"That's not good enough." The elf's voice dropped to a soft, perilous growl; a mean light crept into his dark eyes. "Where do you go, Annatar?"

The threat in the elf's voice made Annatar want to throttle him. It disguised only a pitiful whine for attention, no better than some squalling child who pouted and screamed when their mother for an instant turned aside from them. Resentment ignited in Annatar then, truly his patience was wearing thin with such petty behaviour, and tartly he replied, "Have I committed an offense, my lord? I did not realise that I required your _permission_ to part from your side."

The venom in the Maia's tone needled into Celebrimbor's heart, and it brought up only spite in its wake. Slowly the elf arose from his writing desk, he stalked over to the bench where Annatar sat, and the insolent roll of the Maia's golden eyes as he approached set anger writhing in the base of his stomach.

"What you do in these lands is business of mine," Celebrimbor snarled. He leaned imposingly over Annatar's shoulder, he pressed his bulk down atop the Maia's slighter frame, and the tangible force of Annatar's displeasure sent a perverse impulse of delight sparking through him. It was so darkly elating to see Annatar scowl, a sordid rush of victory flooded through him as the Maia recoiled, and down into his face Celebrimbor growled, "You will answer my question."

"Fine," Annatar hissed, he flicked the honeyed sweep of his hair over his shoulder and the light that suddenly blazed in his eyes sent Celebrimbor's heart lurching.

"Here," he snapped, he stabbed the quill down atop a sheaf of parchment that he thrust towards Celebrimbor. "They are schematics, my lord, incantations, theories," he said coldly. "They are matters of alchemy that I would not expect you to understand. Yet the principle of them is this: some measure of power I can imbue within a metal, this much now is certain. You seek for an end to the troubles of your realm, and perhaps now I can gift one unto you."

Celebrimbor's brow furrowed as he glowered down at the papers. Circular illustrations and ciphered little annotations in a script that he did not recognise clustered about meticulously detailed designs of nine rings, and looking upon them then his mood softened. The first tremors of realisation, of guilt chimed within him then, he began to glimpse at just how much Annatar was offering him, and regret for his brashness sank in.

"These things…" he began softly, apologetically he winced over to where Annatar still sat stiffly. "With such creations you would propose… what? A… a safeguard of some kind? But against what, Annatar? How might we guard against a sickness that we cannot fathom?"

"With the right endowment of power, my lord," Annatar began archly, but swiftly his tone took on a silky cadence, and Celebrimbor's eyes widened as those entrancing words washed through him. "With the right applications of our noble puissance, we would appoint wardens of our lands. Bastions of health and benevolence amid the sickening earth we would raise up, and we would bestow upon them the means to hold back the shapeless evil that encroaches through the soil. Indeed, it is throughout all Middle-earth that we should distribute our gifts, lest these foul cancers spread their plague in earnest to other lands. It would be unwise indeed to abandon the world to rot, even as we build ourselves higher. It befits us not to dwell upon a crumbling pinnacle, but to rest upon the shoulders of a stalwart scaffold of allies."

Wonder glazed Celebrimbor's eyes; well he glimpsed what Annatar was proposing, and his mind raced to the deeper implications of such actions even as the Maia gave them lilting voice. "Such things that we should make will be a marvel of our age, and well it would serve us, it would serve _you_, my lord, to share such wealth. A venerable lord even as the great kings of old you would seem should you extend your hand in friendship across all of Middle-earth, and bring those thought forsaken into your esteem. It would seem but pettiness to trammel such generosity within the fair folk of the North alone, and none should ever accuse one such as yourself of base jealousy, now should they, my lord?"

The words dripped like honey from Annatar's tongue, so desperately Celebrimbor wanted to lick their sweetness from his lips.

"What… what then do you suggest," he breathed; and a slow whirl of excitement crushed through him was Annatar's radiant eyes came to a coy rest upon him.

"Nine rings," the Maia pronounced. "Nine rings of power we might gift to the race of Men, to the mightiest of their kindred throughout all of the lands lit by Arien's grace. With these rings they might make safe the lands for our benefit, they might strengthen their bonds of alliance with Ost-in-Edhil in trade and in other matters, and together united in knowledge and resources we might push back this troublesome blight."

"To whom do we gift them, then?"

"Many noble men there are in the North, but far to the South and to the East they dwell also, and I have walked among them in friendship upon my travels. Upon some I am resolute, and upon others less so, but within the week I shall give you my firm counsel as to whom I consider worthy of your generosity."

"See that you do." Celebrimbor's voice was soft, intimate; hard he swallowed back the whimper of yearning that longed to sound from his throat as Annatar turned, as he stood and absently moved aside.

"They will be such beautiful things, Tyelpë," he purred at last, and about him such a wondrous aura glimmered that Celebrimbor ached to see it. "Your name will forever be counted among the greatest of the Noldor in renown for their skill and their forgery. With these rings, my lord, we seal our futures."

* * *

><p>Despite the looming crisis that day by day scratched a little deeper into the storemasters' supplies, the arrival of the lords of the Edain warranted as grand a feast as Ost-in-Edhil dared to throw. Banners of myriad shapes and sigils fluttered down from the ceiling, and the tables below were laid lavishly throughout the bounds of the great hall. Wines, meads, and ciders were served in plentiful flagons, and between them jostled platters of salted meats both carven and neatly shredded. Honey-glazed boars crowned the tabletops and set their sturdy legs groaning under their weight, and amid them sprung myriad breads, cakes, vegetables and stews, and the hall was alight with the warm clatter of dishes and the chatter of parties both familiar and foreign.<p>

By land or by sea; by swaying palanquin or hairy camel-back, or sprightly clippers skimming across the waves and traded for lush barges in the port of Lond Daer for the idle paddle up the Gwathló, the lords of Middle-earth had answered Celebrimbor's invitation. Amid the full splendour of their courtly retinues they reposed about the benches, and though they talked mostly among their own parties, as the hours rolled by they began to seek out the others of their number, with translators and emissaries sent scurrying to and fro to relay their lords' pleasantries. Yet for the genuine amicability of their conversation, ever their words hinted at darker tidings.

Those who had braved the long North-South Road through the Enedwaith told in their sibilant tongues of foul things upon the road, of slaughter in the high fells, of the bloodied carcasses of men and horses left plundered and crawling with flies by the wayside. To this news the Northmen and Quendi of Celebrimbor's court alike listened, and their mood grew stern. But amid the general throng and excited buzz of the hall their hearts were quickly uplifted: all had arrived hale and whole, and all had come in friendship for the unveiling of what mighty gifts were promised to them.

The moon was riding high amid the tumult of the clouds when at last a call was made for quiet. From a gilded chair at the centre of the high table Celebrimbor stood, bedecked in dark, lordly velvets with a great emerald bound across his brow he seemed the very pinnacle of stately grandeur, and at his brief gesture the hall fell silent. He gave a short and undoubtedly moving speech of welcome, of courage and unity in uncertain times, and seated upon his right hand side Annatar stifled a yawn. His fingers twitched about the stem of his goblet, the elf's prattling and unsubtle self-aggrandisement stirred up nothing but ire within him, and swiftly he distracted himself with eyeing Corannon nearby lest more unsavoury musings grip him in earnest. Garbed in the ceremonial cloth of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, Corannon stood at waiting attention, with nine gleaming rings held reverently before him upon a black velvet cushion.

If only they knew how much work had _truly_ gone into them, Annatar thought as he glanced over the nine trinkets. It was not a matter of power; mostly he had left Celebrimbor to pour the strength of his own _fëa_ into them, and Annatar sealed them with only a dusting knot of power, a corrupt little seed that would sprout, would corrode, and would with due time destroy. Nay, the effort was more in the repression of the increasingly acute desire to snap the elf lord's neck, if only for a reprieve from the incessant questions and barbed insinuations that flowed from him.

A wave of dignified applause broke through the hall as Celebrimbor finished his speech, and with a thin smile plastered over his lips Annatar clapped icily along with them. Celebrimbor stepped forward then, and Corannon moved to bear the rings at his side, and one by one the herald announced the Edain lords who stepped forward to receive their gifts.

To Khamûl, Chieftain of the Wainriders, Caliph of Asmiro, Ju'qûr, and Redsu in the East, Master of the Sea of Rhûn, was gifted a golden band inset with a glittering beryl, and the lord closed his khol-limned, olive eyes in reverence as Celebrimbor slipped the ring upon his finger. To Alcarin, Lord of Fornost and the Arthedain was given a slender ring with a pale hematite crystal upon its seam, and he kissed Celebrimbor fondly upon the cheek as the elf lord raised him up. Long had their lands and cities been allied, and longer still might that allegiance prevail, the man pronounced, and he stepped genially aside as Rhaeon Wyrmrider, fey warrior-king of the Haradwaith ascended the dais. The Wyrmrider's skin was dark as poured pitch, his face was ever veiled so that none might glimpse his mood, but the curving scars that decorated his arms well denoted his rank. The warring clans that dwelt miles inland of the distant port of Umbar had long since tamed the feral sand-wyrms that delved amid the shifting deserts. With meats and sorceries they tamed them, driving them to war and as beasts of labour amid the dunes, and mightiest of their kind, rider of the Ur-nakur, the Earthshaker, was Rhaeon of the clan Tirzul. The chestnut pictograms branded into his arms rippled like the wyrms of legend as he accepted a noble ring upon his burnished finger, a sterling band inlaid with a triangular citrine gem.

To Halador, noble lord of Lond Daer whose lineage traced back even to Haleth the Hunter in the Elder Days, was presented a slim ring of aquamarine, and the lord bowed low before Celebrimbor in acceptance of such a precious gift, and was well satisfied with this gesture of their long friendship. With all of the expected pomp and ceremony then came forth Tar-Súrion crowned with a band of wrought Noldorin gold, ninth King of Númenor in the days of its growing splendour, and as a ring of verdant malachite was placed upon his finger he laughed joyously to receive it. Warmly he embraced Celebrimbor then, a smattering of words passed between them in the High Elven tongue, and he patted Corannon companionably upon the shoulder as he descended the dais and was ensconced back into his noble retinue. Naeryan stepped forward then, High Priest of Khand's Witchocracy clad in robes of smoky grey and a headdress dripping with lion's teeth. His bare feet glided across the marble as one sacrosanct. In a gracious, mellifluous tongue he thanked Celebrimbor for the trinket, a spun band of gold inlaid with a polished stone of lapis was set upon his bone-white finger, and a prayer to his bloodthirsty god beyond the Ephel Dúath in the Shadowed Lands he offered then in hushed, reverent tones.

The aura that gleamed about Annatar seemed to thicken, seemed to grow ever more brilliant as the priest's words washed over him, and deeply he inhaled to squash down the sudden flourish of power that the priest's words invoked in him. Long it was since he had received such direct homage, though ever the Witchocracy burned effigies and made sacrifice in his black name, and the thrill of such concentrated pleasure now writhed and moiled under his skin.

Iormund Serpentsbane replaced the priest upon the dias, the swarthy commander of Andrast, a mariner of Númenorian descent who had vanquished the sea-serpent Crillac upon his perilous voyage east from Rómenna. To him the men of the Ered Nimrais flocked, and graciously he received a stalwart ring of amethyst. The deep purple gem glittered magnificently upon his finger as he raised it up into the gentle moonlight, and warmly he spoke to Celebrimbor and all of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain of the quality of its make. Forward then came the Boneweaver, the dread lord of the Sea of Núrnen, in shimmering robes of an uncertain pearlescent hue that lay corseted to his abdomen with great curls of some strange creature's ribcage. Small mismatched vertebrae clacked in macabre pendulums from his dreadlocks, femurs and clavicles were strung together upon a cord of knotted cartilage at his waist, and upon gaunt fingers already gilt with carven knucklebones Celebrimbor placed a small ring of onyx.

Yet it was odd, Celebrimbor thought, where the other lords made gracious genuflection to him, the Boneweaver with his eerie iridescent eyes seemed to stare through him, past him. He seemed only to espy Annatar, the Maia serenely seated at the high table still and observing the proceedings. It was strange, Celebrimbor puzzled, it must simply have been a trick of the light or a spiteful phantom of his imagination, yet as the Boneweaver turned, he was certain that he saw him wink at Annatar. And the mischievous little smile that hinted at the edges of his Maia's lips sent dual shards of jealousy and suspicion stabbing through his innards.

Last of the foreign guests came forth the Lord of Angmar, the Sorcerer-King of Carn Dûm, Warden of the Forodwaith and Rhudaur even to the peaks of Mount Gundabad in the Ered Mithrim, and to him was given a thick golden band inset with a milky opal. The proud lord bowed low before Celebrimbor as the ring was placed upon his forefinger, and it shone like a curdled drop of cream crowning his metal-shingled gauntlets.

To merriments the feast commenced, and throughout the night many of the visiting lords announced themselves once more to the high table, eager to bask in Celebrimbor's favour. From such sycophantic abasements Annatar turned aside, but more than once he was drawn irrevocably into their attentions, and he imparted what oily words he thought befitting to each. To some it was a simple veneer of cordiality, but to some whom in other guises were more intimately acquainted, the conversations in Celebrimbor's presence grew veiled. Furtively Annatar would slip from the table, taking one lord or other aside, and his lengthening absences preyed upon Celebrimbor's heart as the feast continued.

The night's revelries had long since drawn to a close when Annatar slipped back inside the doors of Celebrimbor's house. Towards his own rooms he walked, with lungs full of night air and the salty aftertaste of black puissance upon his tongue, he stalked through the warm annuli of the lanterns dotted about the corridors.

"Annatar," a voice called suddenly from down a joining hallway, and turning in surprise the Maia found himself accosted by Celebrimbor's weary steward. "My lord commands your company this night," Aethir said slowly, tiredly, he walked forward to greet the Maia properly. "I had been sent to look for you…"

"And so you have found me," Annatar replied, his voice kept carefully neutral even as irksome apprehension swirled through him. Demands of such a nature bore ill tidings by the shadows of night, and quite frankly he had been looking forward to the peaceful embrace of his bed, not batting off whatever clumsy threats or advances the elf lord sought to thrust upon him. Ruefully he sighed, yet to Aethir then he said, "Thank you. I shall go to him presently."

The steward nodded in agreement, he opened his mouth as if to say something more, but with a pained twist of his lips thought the better of it. Fleetly then Aethir bade Annatar good night, and left the Maia to his unwanted trek to Celebrimbor's chambers.

The thick, sweet aroma of wine greeted Annatar as he edged the door open to Celebrimbor's bedchamber, and disgust curled within him as he stepped through the doorway. The grand bed lay untouched against the far wall even for so late an hour, and before a round table set into the corner of the room the elf sat. Before him lay several half-emptied flagons of wine, a goblet he held shakily in his hands, and his drunkenness was so repellently clear as clumsily he turned about.

A crooked leer scored over Celebrimbor's face as he sighted the Maia, _his_ Maia, but though his cheeks were flushed a deep pink with the wine, though his eyes sparkled, there was no merriment in him, and cold grew his stare as Annatar shut the door behind him.

"You…" the elf lord slurred, the legs of the chair scraped across the floor as Celebrimbor wrenched it about to face him. "You have lied to me, Annatar."

Annatar stamped down the contempt that threatened to bolt from him at such an audacious claim, he grappled it back down to a simmering glow of resentment in the pit of his stomach as he stepped a few paces into the room. Icily he smiled, and thinly he replied, "Lied to you, my lord? Of what nonsense do you speak? What manner of deceits do you mean to thrust upon me now?"

"You spin your words cunningly, Maia," Celebrimbor sneered; he took a large gulp of wine that stained his lips a ghastly purple. "But it does not veil your guilt. You have been espied in your secrecies, in what you would keep hidden from me."

"And what do you presume that I hide from you, my lord?"

"Gilthariel has spied you slipping into the shadows of dusk," Celebrimbor said, and a dark swathe of indignant, _justified_ anger unfurled within him as Annatar looked haughtily down upon him. "She has seen you flit among the gardens like some malicious sprite, and outwards into my city, always furtive, secret in your movements."

"I am a guest in your house, my lord," Annatar replied coldly, and though he did not move something about him seemed to sharpen, the radiant, evanescent aura that enshrouded him for a moment became brittle, and something treacherous hinted beneath it. "I have committed no crime," the Maia continued. "I have not violated the laws of your realm. Might I not wander the grounds and the city at my leisure? Or would you rob me of that right in your pretentious accusations?"

A ruddy flush mottled down Celebrimbor's neck, and hatefully he snapped, "I pretend at nothing! Gilthariel has seen the ravens flock to you; she spoke to me of how they glut themselves at your will. They bring you scraps of meat in tribute, they caw and make obeisance before you…"

The Maia's scoff brought Celebrimbor up short; the sneer that curled over his handsome lips sent outrage and the first awful tremors of desire clenching through Celebrimbor's guts. For so imperious, so cold and lucent Annatar seemed, his chin lifted proudly and his golden eyes glittering as he stalked forward.

"These are but flimsy allegations, my lord," he began silkily, behind his words he pushed just the slightest spell of compulsion, of coercion. "I walk among the gardens by dusk because it pleases me to do so. The red spill of the sunset into the haze of the West is glorious to behold, and the sweet scent of pine upon the air brings me joy in these troubled times. There are birds in the gardens indeed; the ravens roost there even as they have claimed the city as their home. Yet they flock to any who might walk among them, they squabble and caw for attention, and I have little for them save a passing glance. I cannot begin to fathom what you mean of _obeisance_, my lord. I am no slave of Manwë's, I do not command the great birds of these lands. I do not command _anyone_…"

Nausea squirmed in Celebrimbor's stomach; Annatar's words were so _true_, he realised, so innocent and so subtly injured, and guilt spilled through him that ever he should have suspected evil of one he so adored. Yet the lingering shreds of mistrust still swirled within his mind, and shakily he took another mouthful of wine, its numbing sweetness seeming to soothe his fragile nerves. And even as he looked up once more, Annatar was there, aching in his beauty; so tender, so pure and sacred and good.

"Do you not trust me as you once did, my lord? Let not the lies of some viperous maid curdle the air between us, for I would not wish it so."

"Lady Gilthariel is wiser than you give her credit for," Celebrimbor sighed, but even to himself his words sounded faint. "I do not dismiss her council lightly…"

Displeasure marred Annatar's smooth features, and snidely he remarked, "The Lady Gilthariel may soon discover that wisdom does not equate to prudence."

"Prudence…" A dim flush of emotion stirred Celebrimbor to bitter mirth, and he took another gulp of wine. "She is my guest here, as are you," he muttered. "She need not walk with fear within these halls. She is… she is a reminder of what my inactions have wrought…"

Annatar's eyes narrowed; the wine hummed inside of Celebrimbor's skull, and in a sudden, baleful torrent he spat the words from him. "She was disfigured because of _me_. Because of my father. Because I did not stop him, I did not have the _courage_… I stood aside when he spoke out all those years before, he and my uncle usurped the throne of Nargothrond and I just let it happen, I turned my face away, and - … How many other things have happened upon my unwitting account?"

"Do you know what he did to her, Annatar?" Celebrimbor's fingers clenched hard around the stem of his goblet, his knuckles whitened and a spasm of abhorrence twisted across his face. "Doriath burned, and Menegroth was fed to the flames of my uncles' war. My father came upon her in the halls of her kin, and consumed by his madness he saw only another enemy, another obstacle standing in the way of his prize… He took her, he _butchered_ her brother before her eyes, and even as the flames licked up the crumbling walls he smashed the blade from her hands, he seized her, he pressed her into the fire. And he _laughed_ as she screamed, he crooned the foulest of things into her ear as her flesh melted, as she was mutilated, and he left her gasping and broken upon the floor. He turned aside with her brother's blood upon his sword and he left her there to _burn_…"

Celebrimbor's head bowed into the silence that hovered through the room, and Annatar looked impassively down upon him. It was a heinous deed, the Maia thought absently, yet the elf lord's whining did little to move him. Indeed, his patience with such loathsome self-pity was scraping perilously thin.

"I cannot turn aside, Annatar," Celebrimbor said suddenly, fiercely; yet the look in his eyes as he glanced up to the Maia betrayed only his despair. "I cannot look away anymore. And yet now the omens of another war gather before my gates…"

He refreshed his goblet of wine from a heavy flagon, and from it took a long, mournful draught.

"My mother," he said softly, "perhaps she was right, all of those millennia ago. When first my grandfather spoke out against the Valar's rule, when he rebelled and my uncles first drew their swords amid the streets of Tirion. She looked upon my father, and where I saw only righteous, admirable pride, perhaps she saw him for what he truly was. She saw him as a _monster_…"

"And yet still she abandoned you to him."

"_What_?" The cruelty in the Maia's tone skewered right through him, it left him breathless in his shock.

"She did not love you enough to make you see the truth." Something merciless cracked through Annatar's very being. His words cut down to the bone. "She left you blind. She scratched out your eyes and left you to stumble on in your father's shadow. She left you to be tainted, for him to pollute you. It's almost _funny_, really. Her cruelty is admirable."

"No!" Celebrimbor gasped, a wave of drunken outrage sloshed through him as he gaped up at Annatar in offense. "No, no it _wasn't_ like that…"

"She forged for you your exile simply because she did not care to stop you." Malice glittered in Annatar's eyes as he stalked forward, tall and proud he stood over Celebrimbor who seemed for a moment to quail before him. "Perhaps you were too much like him," the Maia sneered. "Too wild, too _savage_, too entranced by the glow of your own flame, so easily consumed by the rush of your own glory. Perhaps you proved to her a _disappointment_, in the end. Either way, it was a cowardly deed."

"You…" Celebrimbor spluttered, his vision near whitened with rage as he stared up at Annatar. "You _dare_…"

"To tell you the truth?" the Maia snapped, all high cheekbones and twisted lips. "Yes, I do. You shroud yourself in petty self-delusions of grandeur, of your own righteousness, but in truth your kin betrayed you, and even now you betray yourself. From the very beginning, you were destined to fall. Your legacy placed the noose about your neck, and you do precious little to dissuade the tightening of the knot."

"No!" Celebrimbor growled, he looked upon Annatar with abhorrence in his eyes, but it was the curl of lust that swam beneath it that undid him. "You're _wrong_," he said bitterly, pleadingly. "I am not just a product of my bloodline. I am _not_ my father."

Wine slicked his trembling lips in a ruddy hue, it drowned out what lordly inhibitions fettered him and it inflamed only that which he would suppress. And as Annatar turned aside with a scoff, as the Maia _yet again _denied him, a carnal surge of lust ripped up from Celebrimbor's stomach, it smashed past every wavering bond of decorum that he had set to guard it; it fizzed in his veins with its power and its fury. So as Annatar stepped aside, sharply Celebrimbor reached out to him, his hand clamped down hard about the Maia's wrist and yanked him back.

"You're wrong, Annatar," he growled, his fingers bit with crushing force into the Maia's arm as he tried to squirm away. And oh what sordid part of him screeched out its victory as he jerked Annatar towards him, as he pulled him down, as he forced him into his lap. Annatar's legs twisted between his thighs, and something lurched in kind in Celebrimbor's stomach, such hot, hurting desire crashed through him. It collided with a last tremble of horror as he felt Annatar flinch as his right hand gripped his waist, and for a moment it shook him.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, he whispered it into the crook of Annatar's neck, he panted it into the Maia's skin even as his grip tightened, waist and wrist alike. "I'm sorry… I…" The wriggle of Annatar's hips atop him sent a hot crush of arousal bolting through him, it set his mind reeling, brimming over with the thrill, the danger, the ecstasy of it, and through the muddle of his thoughts he wasn't even sure what he was begging for anymore but still he mewled, "Please, Annatar, please, please forgive me…"

His fingers delved beneath Annatar's shirt, they slid over the curved muscle of his hip, and even as the Maia jerked away from him, he slid his hand yet more firmly across his pelvis, his stomach. "Please, Annatar," he whispered, he pulled the Maia yet closer, he crooned the words like some sick fawning litany up his neck, his lips trailing reverent little kisses up the warm skin of the Maia's throat. "Please, _please_, absolve me, Annatar, please, love me, and for your mercy I would see you crowned…"

"And I would see you bleed for it."

Desire slammed through Celebrimbor's heart; he scarcely registered what words had flown from the Maia's lips as a feral snarl of carnality ripped out of his throat, his fingers trailed across the scars upon Annatar's back and with that final swell of emotion it was as if the world had come undone. Desperately he slid his hand up, his right hand cupped the base of Annatar's skull and with the force of all that yearning and crumpled, awful pride for years now rejected he pulled the Maia forwards, he smashed his lips upon Annatar's own.

Clumsily, greedily he kissed him, he forced apart the Maia's lips and a groan of lust he sent spinning down Annatar's throat. And in that moment such base ardours moved him; the protesting wriggle of Annatar's hips atop him only set him aflame, the dizzying swirl of Annatar's tongue only sent him spiralling higher, bolder, stronger. It suffused him with not the desire to revere but to _covet_, to possess, to consume, to _destroy_; to take Annatar and piece by pleading piece just break him apart, so that he could never betray him again, so that nobody else could ever have him, touch him, look at him; he could be perfect and pure and precious forever, he would blink up at Celebrimbor with parted legs and wet lips and he would be _his_, and his alone.

His hand dropped to Annatar's waist, his fingers groped over his arse, they left furrows across his breeches with the force of his intent, but with a wrench that took him utterly surprise Annatar ripped himself from his grip.

Quickly the Maia stood, loathing burned in his eyes, but with feyness to match Celebrimbor followed him; he grasped Annatar roughly about the hips once more and forced him backwards. An obscene waltz across the room he led until at last the Maia's back was pressed up against the wall, Celebrimbor's right hand came up beneath his chin and he had nowhere left to hide.

Savagely then he kissed him, possessively, hungrily, and where Annatar found the restraint within himself to endure the elf's boldness, to not spit out a curse and to send his entrails slopping to the floor, he did not know. Puissance sparked within his veins, disgust churned in his blood, and with one controlled flash of power he wrested his mouth free, with every ounce of conviction in him he shoved Celebrimbor back a few paces.

Haughtily he shook his ruffled hair from his shoulders as the elf lord stared at him. He licked the smear of wine from his lips and he spat it to the floor.

Something unhinged danced in the elf's eyes, some sheen of madness showed itself bold, and an ugly sneer contorted his face as he breathed, "You would refuse me, _still_?"

"You are not yourself."

"I am more myself now than you could fathom in the depths of your dreams," Celebrimbor growled, a brute, animal note clotted in his voice. "For all too clearly now I see you, Maia. I see all that you withhold from me. All that you _deny_ me."

"Allegiance I swore to you," Annatar retorted, his eyes narrowed disdainfully. "But never subservience. I do not owe you anything."

"Who granted you passage into this city," the elf lord snarled. "Who has elevated you among our rank, supported you, trusted you, even when those about you hounded you with _lies_? Everything you are, Annatar, you owe it to me. And I only ask for a measure of gratitude in return."

"I do not sell my gratitude like some dockside harlot," Annatar spat, and a livid vein split down the elf's forehead to hear it.

Fury thrummed in Celebrimbor's stride as he stepped forward, as he grabbed the insolent Maia before him and forced him back, as he snarled down into his face, "_I_ am your patron._ I_ am your lord. Every breath that you take within these walls is at _my_ pleasure. Every beat of your fickle little heart passes because_ I _allow it. Do I not then deserve you?"

The arrogance in the elf's tone was galling; it was all that Annatar could do not to laugh in his face. Yet as the elf's hands tightened menacingly about his shoulders Annatar grimaced; it hardly seemed worth the effort of restraining the black puissance that longed to rally to his defence, and in a voice that could have withered leaves upon the branch he said, "Perhaps then you do. But I cannot give you what you hope to obtain."

"Can you not?" The elf's finger trailed across Annatar's lips, domineeringly he parted them, and a ruined smile of lust and warped, tender affection twisted over his face as he felt the hot slick of the Maia's saliva upon his skin. "You hide behind your pretty smiles, your gilded eyes, your coy flirtations. No more."

Into Annatar's waist Celebrimbor ground his hips, his left hand slipped to Annatar's pelvis, it skated over his hipbones and roughly Celebrimbor began to palm him, and from him then Annatar recoiled in earnest.

"You're disgusting."

Something lewd, something dark and vulgar and pounding in its need punched up from Celebrimbor's stomach, he pressed the larger bulk of his body against Annatar once more, and voluptuously, messily he kissed him, he poured the words down the Maia's throat. "No more than you, little whore."

A crackling pulse of puissance sent Celebrimbor staggering backwards, it haloed Annatar in a wreath of seething, phosphorescent sparkles of light. Yet as the breath trickled back into Celebrimbor's lungs, the furore of his madness inflated him once more, thwarted desire ignited within him and an unearthly smile clove over his face as he glared over at Annatar.

"All that I have done," he hissed, one arm he held instinctively clasped to his stomach like a shield, and he half expected it to come away dripping in crimson. He would have scratched it clean if it had. "All that I have done, I have done it for you. Is it not enough?"

"Look at yourself," Annatar sneered, there was nothing left in his eyes but contempt. "You're a _disgrace_. It speaks to naught that your mother abandoned you, that your father was disappointed, that Fëanáro himself would exorcise you like a blemish upon his legacy. You are _weak_, Tyelperinquar, you are _hollow, _you are nothing but a snivelling shadow pretending at their greatness, and –"

Annatar's stinging vitriol was hauled to an abrupt close as Celebrimbor lunged forwards, as he clouted the Maia across the face. A choke of surprise cracked out of Annatar's throat, and how hatefully then the Maia looked to him. He flicked his hair back from one already reddening cheek, but amid his revulsion how _triumphantly_ he smiled. Balefully Celebrimbor glared back at him, his palm stinging from the open-handed blow and indignation singing in his blood, and his fingers shook as the silence curdled between them.

"So," the Maia said tartly, the quiet shattered and quailed. Through a bloodied lip he grimaced, his golden eyes _burned_, and if Celebrimbor had somehow hoped for his submission then sorely he was left dismayed. For such venom seemed to fill Annatar then, such anger, such boiling outrage that it seemed almost to shriek from him, and even through the clamour of his own mood Celebrimbor became coldly, _excruciatingly_ aware that he had crossed a line.

"So," Annatar sneered, and such was the imperiousness in his bearing, such was the raw, churning power that irradiated him that Celebrimbor near collapsed before him in contrition. "The taint runs in the blood after all."

"I am not my father," the elf whispered hoarsely, he looked so helplessly, so piteously to Annatar for forgiveness even as his palm stung, as it prickled red with the impact. It left him stained in his guilt. "Please, _please_, Annatar, I am not them, I - "

"Nay," the Maia said softly, callously. "You are not even fit to tarnish their memory."

And with that Annatar stepped away, he turned aside, and at that last rebuke, that final spurn something awful ripped up from Celebrimbor's stomach. It clawed through him with its puissance, some fell vestige of Fëanáro's ancient wrath perhaps did for a moment seize him, dark and pounding and violent it consumed him until it sent him reeling, it crowned him in its madness and it spurred him to act.

For this impudent Maia would kneel before him, willing or no Annatar would come to heel, he would me _made_ obedient, his submission would be stripped from him, torn from him until those pretty eyes wept, until bruised lips begged for his mercy, until Annatar licked apologies from his fingers like some shivering little dog, and maybe then Celebrimbor might spare him from the whip.

Sharply then he lunged, fury and mania crowned, but what chilling blades of shock stabbed through him then, for even as he broke towards Annatar's retreating form, the Maia moved. Quicker than thought, quicker than Celebrimbor's eyes could follow Annatar twisted, with an unholy snarl upon his face he whirled, and puissance black as the fathomless night burned in the Maia's fingertips as his hand came to a crushing, brutal close upon Celebrimbor's throat.

* * *

><p><em>Ahh sorry to end on such a cliffhanger, but this did have to end somewhere! As usual, I sincerely hope you enjoyed this (rather lengthy) update! Until next time, theeventualwinner<em>


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